A handful of borrowers including Wells Fargo & Co. sold fresh debt in the US investment-grade bond market Wednesday, a sign issuers are unphased after Fitch Ratings stripped the nation of its top-tier credit rating.
(Bloomberg) — A handful of borrowers including Wells Fargo & Co. sold fresh debt in the US investment-grade bond market Wednesday, a sign issuers are unphased after Fitch Ratings stripped the nation of its top-tier credit rating.
The operating arm of the bank — Wells Fargo Bank — sold $5 billion of bonds in a four-part deal comprised of senior notes, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The longest dated portion of the offering, a 3-year fixed-rate note, yields 0.92 percentage points over Treasuries, the data show.
The deal comes a day after Fitch downgraded the US one level to AA+ from AAA, arguing the nation’s fiscal health will likely deteriorate over the next three years amid increased borrowing needs. The downgrade followed the US Treasury’s plan to escalate debt issuance, an announcement that sent the 10-year Treasury yields climbing to the highest levels since November.
A measure of perceived risk in US corporate debt markets, the IG CDX spread, widened 2.13 basis points to 67.07 as of 4:33pm New York time.
The timing of the downgrade is “odd,” and “the Fitch assessment doesn’t tell the markets much they didn’t already know,” Bloomberg Intelligence’s Stuart Paul and Anna Wong wrote in a note. That may explain why investment-grade issuance has proceeded full steam ahead.
It’s the third time the Wells Fargo has tapped the bond market in recent weeks. The bank previously raised $8.5 billion and $1.7 billion of bonds after the lender’s second-quarter earnings beat estimates. The latter transaction was also the first preferred deal since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sparked broader industry tumult in March.
Monday’s debt issuance from Wells Fargo could mean that the bank is trying to guard against deposit outflows that have been plaguing the broader industry, according to BI’s Arnold Kakuda.
“The reason why folks do operating company debt is because it’s a way to offset deposit outflow, so it could signal they’re seeing a pick up in deposit pressure,” Kakuda said in a phone interview. Wells Fargo is also facing Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fees that they will need to pay, he added.
Wells Fargo declined to comment.
Columbia Pipelines and Daimler Truck Finance North America LLC were also in the market Wednesday.
–With assistance from Michael Gambale, Sri Taylor and Boris Korby.
(Updates with pricing details in the first and second paragraphs.)
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