WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 22--The International Finance Corporation (IFC) announced today that it has launched a US$10 billion Global Medium Term Note (GMTN) program. Issuance under the program will commence shortly. Once the GMTN program is initiated, IFC will cease to issue under its Euro-MTN or US-MTN programs. IFC's French domestic MTN program, however will continue to be operative.
"The GMTN will give us the ability to take advantage of opportunities to place our issues in the US domestic market after issuing in the Euromarkets, or vice versa. It offers us tremendous flexibility in that respect," said Birgitta Kantola, IFC's Vice President for Finance and Planning. "We expect to pick up efficiencies of scale by combining the two programs that we have been using. The initial cost of setting it up will be justified by lower administrative and maintenance costs," she added.
The new program will be used for "plain vanilla" issuance, as well as for arbitrage-driven or structured trades. While the program will be used to document a wide variety of transactions, IFC has no plans to commence large-scale public global bond issuance anytime soon.
The program is listed on the Luxembourg and Paris Stock exchanges, and has been rated triple-A by both Moody's and Standard & Poor's rating agencies.
Morgan Stanley & Co. (International) is the arranger of the program and the dealers are Chase Manhattan International Limited, Goldman Sachs International, IBJ International plc, J.P. Morgan Securities Ltd., Morgan Stanley & Co. (International) and SBC Warburg, a division of Swiss Bank Corporation.
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest multilateral source of financing for private sector companies in developing countries. Its long-term debt is rated triple A by both Standard & Poor's Corp. and Moody's Investors Service.
