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View the Islamic finance awards index More Islamic finance deals of the year: Deal of the year Best Islamic project finance deal Best real estate deal Most innovative deal |
Best sukuk deal
Lead managers: HSBC, Liquidity Management House, Citi It was an outstanding year for the sukuk market and there were many candidates for this award, including the $4 billion issue from Qatar and the $1 billion hybrid tier 1 issue from ADIB (given the award in our Middle East deals of the year).
But Turkey’s $1.5 billion 5.5-year sukuk was enormously impressive. It was its debut as a sovereign sukuk issuer, the biggest ever sovereign debut, and this from a Ba1/BB/BB+ rated issuer. It was the culmination of a decade of slow progress in getting the legislation in place in early 2012 for a sukuk to be launched at all. It creates the possibility of much more government-linked and corporate issuance from Turkey. And, perhaps most impressively, this large debut issue priced 10 basis points inside the Republic of Turkey’s conventional curve. In fact, it was enormously popular, with a book of $7 billion allowing the $1.25 billion transaction to be increased in size despite that tight pricing. More than that, it went where Turkey wanted it to: 41% went to pure Islamic accounts, diversifying the sovereign’s investor base.
