By Shankar Ramakrishnan and Davide Barbuscia
(Reuters) – Top-rated U.S. companies raised over $29 billion in debt on Tuesday, giving the corporate bond market a strong start to the new year, as the companies tapped demand from investors anticipating lower interest rates later this year.
Local names like Toyota Motor Credit, Ford Motor Credit along with European banks UBS, BNP Paribas and Lloyds Banking Group were among a slate of 16 companies that issued new bonds on Tuesday.
The firms were looking to take advantage of low Treasury yields and tightening credit spreads, or the premium companies pay over a Treasury benchmark, to mostly refinance a large maturity wall this year and next. Roughly $780 billion of bonds mature in 2024 and $1 trillion of them come due in 2025, according to a Citi research note.
Bond syndicate desks were expecting an average of nearly $63 billion of investment-grade bonds the first week of the year, above the…
