Turkey to hire three banks for sale of Samurai bonds

Turkey hired three banks for a sale of Samurai bonds guaranteed by Japan Bank for International Cooperation, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Daiwa Securities Group Inc, Nomura Holdings Inc and SMBC Nikko Securities Inc will help the government sell the notes, said the people, asking not to be identified because the information is private.

Samurai bonds, yen-denominated debt sold in Japan by overseas borrowers, returned 0.53 per cent last month, the most since October 2010, on signs that the credit market is withstanding Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show. The debt lost 0.81 per cent in 2011.

Turkey may meet some of its external borrowing goal of 9.5 billion liras ($5.4bn) through the Japanese market, Taskin Temiz, deputy director for public finance at the Treasury, said at a conference in Vienna last month. Selling Samurai bonds is a goal “we are working on, but are not yet so sure about,” Temiz said at that time.

No one was immediately available to comment on the matter when the Treasury was contacted twice by phone today.

Turkey raised ¥180 billion ($2.4bn) from a sale in March of 10-year, 1.87 per cent Samurai bonds guaranteed by Japan Bank for International Cooperation. The offering was the biggest by a sovereign issuer in a decade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The securities were priced to yield 48 basis points more than the yen swap rate, according to the data.