Issuer: Bell Atlantic (exchangeable into Cable & Wireless Communications shares)
Date: August 1998
Amount: $3.2 billion
Bookrunner: Warburg Dillon Reed
Asked to point out the ideal time during 1998 to launch an equity-linked financing and you would probably say spring. You would be unlikely to think that the beginning of August, just as the holidays were getting underway and the global economy was about to go into meltdown, was the best time to issue. But a week after they announced a merger with GTE, that is exactly what Bell Atlantic did. And they pulled it off.
Ellen Wolf, treasurer of Bell Atlantic says: “Clearly we had some good luck, the issue went out just prior to the markets going crazy. The only sign of trouble we had was the widespread unease over the Asia crisis. We had long debates about whether it was a good time to issue and in the end decided to go for it—the same period in 1997 had been good too—and we were right.”
Over the three weeks before the launch, the Dow Jones industrial average fell by 9% and shares worldwide also slid amid worries that Asia’s crisis was worsening.