1987 - Year of the shrinking market?
Warwick Hilder, chief manager of financial markets at Australia's largest state borrower, the New South Wales Treasury Corporation, needs to raise just US$100 million to complete his A$490 million (US$316 million) offshore borrowing programme for the financial year to June 1987.
"We would probably like to issue Eurobonds, but only if there is a particularly attractive opening,' he said. The alternative would be to issue paper through Japan, which Hilder has found an efficient source of US dollar funds.
Funds raised would probably be swapped into fixed-rate Australian dollars as they became available, he said.
Domestically Hilder is still looking for another A$900 million (US$580 million) mostly in inscribed stock out of a year's total target of A$1.2 billion (US$774 million). He expects rates to fall from this month, and to do the bulk of the borrowing after January 1987.
The programme for the second half of calendar 1987 will depend on the Loan Council, a joint state and federal committee which sets individual state borrowing limits.
"Overall we will probably be borrowing less, because it will be an easier year for conversions [rollovers],' said Hilder.