CEB issues EUR 1.25 billion 7-year Social Inclusion Bond Benchmark

Paris - On Tuesday 9 April 2024, Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB), rated Aaa/AAA/AAA (all stable), priced a EUR 1.25 billion 7-year Social Inclusion Bond Benchmark, its largest syndicated social inclusion bond issuance to date. The final book closed above EUR 3.3bn.

Highlights

• The timing of this very successful Social Inclusion Bond (“SIB”) issue coincided closely with the maturity of CEB’s first ever Social Inclusion Bond, which had been issued in 2017 when the CEB started to issue its pioneering SIBs.
• The success of the transaction reflects the importance and impact of the CEB’s Social Inclusion Bonds in contributing to CEB’s mission of strengthening social cohesion and leading the global trend towards a just and socially inclusive climate transition in its 43 member states.

Deal details

• After a relatively quiet period in the EUR SSA market, with the prior week seeing the lowest supply YTD, CEB opened books for its annual flagship EUR Benchmark 7-year Social Inclusion Bond with guidance set MS+15bps area on Tuesday 9th April 2024 at 9:11 CET, gaining comfort from the constructive investor feedback and Indications-of-Interests collected after the transaction’s announcement the day before.
• Momentum built quickly, seeing high quality, real money accounts acting on their aforementioned positive interest and entering the book with substantial orders, allowing for the first book update upwards of EUR 2.5bn with the spread set at MS+13bps shortly after an hour in the market. The update channeled a healthy surge in demand, seeing an influx of new quality accounts.
• The strong, high quality demand allowed CEB to price its largest social inclusion bond issuance to date, setting the size at EUR 1.25bn with final books 2.7x oversubscribed.
• Socially responsible investors were well represented in the book, with over 60% of the book allocated to SRI investors.
• The transaction garnered considerable interest for banks, central banks and official institutions. The geographic distribution was focused towards Benelux and UK / Irish accounts, with a good mix of other European countries and a strong support from China.

For full technical details of the transaction, please click here.