Domestic bond designed to manage Lebanon’s debt

This four-year deal, handled entirely by Morgan Stanley, marks Lebanon’s latest effort to manage its worrisome public debt: it also provoked a hissy fit among rival debt market investment bankers.

It refinanced $650 million of local US dollar Contractor bonds and raised an additional $100 million off the Republic’s MTN programme. Contractor bonds were launched by the government in the 1990s to settle large arrears to construction companies incurred through the country’s heavy post-war reconstruction spending.