Issuer: Ford Motor Company
Date: September 1998
Amount: $1.5 billion
Global coordinator: Merrill Lynch
Many issuers this year did not enjoy the luxury of being able to wait for the market to pick up before tapping the Eurobond market. Some had only one window of opportunity and had to make it count. So they tried to forget about the current volatility and think instead of future issuance. Ford Motor Company, a first time issuer, was a case in point and impressed investors by marketing with a forward-thinking, reverse inquiry strategy.
Ford and Merrill Lynch, bookrunners on the deal, saw the importance in properly gauging investor appetite given the difficult economic environment. Roadshowing was comprehensive: in a single week the team visited London, Milan, Madrid, Zurich, Paris and Brussels. They not only marketed the deal but also worked at selling the Ford Motor Company’s name to Europe before the launch of the euro. “We wanted to highlight the transaction and the company,” says Mark DeVito, managing director of debt capital markets at Merrill Lynch.
The investor community responded well. “We set no expectation that we would issue at the end of the roadshow,” says DeVito.