Brussels – 25 March 2015 – Euronext Brussels announces the successful admission to listing on its Alternext market of corporate bonds issued by Cofinimmo, the Belgian real estate company specialising in rental property.
The bonds are admitted to listing on Alternext Brussels through a private placement with a total issued amount of €190 million and a seven-year maturity. The interest rate stands at 1.92%. The operation was led by Degroof Corporate Finance.
Cofinimmo’s bonds are admitted to listing under the Euronext Private Placement Bonds programme (EPPB) which Euronext recently initiated at Alternext. A Euronext initiative, this new product gives issuers of private placement bonds— Euro PP, High Yield, mutualized bonds or securitisation vehicles —easier access to Euronext markets in France, Belgium and Portugal, thus expanding their investor base.
Vincent van Dessel, CEO of Euronext Brussels: “The listing of its bond by Cofinimmo highlights Euronext’s position as a leading stock exchange and financing centre for high quality companies. Corporates are increasingly looking to diversify their funding and the capital markets enable companies to address their debt funding needs, both short and long term. With the EPPB programme, Euronext emphasizes once more that it makes the right choices to meet the issuers’ needs.”
Alain Baetens, Head of Listings of Euronext Brussels, added: “We are very satisfied to see the great value our new EPPB programme offers to issuers, intermediaries and investors. By offering companies simplified access to financial markets, at competitive costs, and through a secure operational process, we meet the market’s demand. We are also providing an answer to the comfort sought by investors looking for market transparency and clear regulation. We are confident this offer will also allow smaller companies to find their way more easily towards the financial markets in order to optimize their financial decisions.”
Jerome Descamps, CFO of Cofinimmo: “The success of this bond issue listed on Alternext Brussels confirms Cofinimmo’s ability to regularly raise money on the capital markets at favourable conditions. Thanks to this transaction the average debt maturity is lengthened to 4.1 years and more than 90% of the debts maturing in 2016 are already refinanced.”
Patrick Moermans, Executive Director at Degroof Corporate Finance: "We are glad that Alternext (Brussels) offers today a clear and simple procedure for private placements. As a result, the step towards the stock exchange has indeed become shorter for (Belgian) issuers. This listing has a favourable impact on the placement capacity and subsequently on the success of the placement: in recent private placements of bonds, we noticed that the interest of foreign institutional investors depends greatly on the listing of the bonds.”