BEST CENTRAL EUROPEAN ISSUE: TPSA rings the bell

Deals of the Year

Issuer: Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA)
Announced: December 1998
Amount: $1 billion
Bookrunners: JP Morgan, Salomon Smith Barney

Thanks to the turbulence caused by the Russian crisis, investors’ perceptions of emerging markets were low in late 1998 and secondary spread levels had widened a great deal. But this created an opportunity for Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA). “Our aspirations were realistic at the start; we started roadshowing at $500 million over five years,” says Jonathan Brown, emerging market syndicate manager at JP Morgan.