Romania paid a fee of EUR450,000 to the banking consortium made up of Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Societe Generale, which last week handled the EUR1.5 billion eurobond issue for which the country will pay an interest rate of 4.625% per year on the external market.
The fee is EUR150,000 lower than that collected by the consortium that handled the bonds issued in 2012. Last year’s bond issue also amounted to EUR1.5 billion, but the interest rate was higher, of 4.875% a year. The team hired by the Finance Ministry in 2012 had largely been the same, only instead of French SocGen, there was UK’s Barclays.
The fees for organizing and underwriting the bond issues on the external markets are negotiated by the Finance Ministry as a percentage of the total amount borrowed.
The fee was 0.04% in 2012, and for last week’s issue it was cut to 0.03% – a historic low for Romania.
The Finance Ministry does not make public the fees paid to foreign banks in charge of attracting loans from the external market, citing confidentiality clauses.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)