BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

11/03/2010

Belarus to name debut Eurobond leads this month

MINSK, March 11 (Reuters) - Belarus will name the lead managers of its debut Eurobond issue -- worth at least $500 million -- before the end of the month, a Finance Ministry official said on Thursday.

The former Soviet republic is joining a raft of other crisis-hit emerging markets seeking cash abroad this year. They include Belarus's bigger neighbour and key trading partner Russia, which is set to return to the Eurobond market after a decade, looking to raise up to $17.8 billion.

Belarus plans to pick at least three lead managers for its maiden issue, and has mentioned Russia's biggest lender Sberbank as one of the possible candidates.

"We do not yet have agreements which have been formalised in documents, but we are close to them. By the end of the month we will definitely name the organisers," Pavel Ladik, an adviser to the finance minister, told Reuters.

"We are looking at this issue not so much as a way of raising money but mainly as the opening of a new financial instrument for the country ... We are doing it for our banks, which have long been pondering the issue of Eurobonds."

The country's largest bank, Belarusbank, last year postponed plans for a Eurobond.

(Reporting by Andrey Makhovsky, Writing by Toni Vorobyova; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Source:

http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=7787657&subject=companies&action=article


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