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Bloomberg
South Korea’s biggest arranger of offshore bond sales expects another busy year in 2020 due to a big wall of maturing debt and foreign investor demand at a time of rising uncertainties elsewhere.
Korean issuers sold $33.3 billion of notes abroad last year, only slightly below the six-year high marked in 2018, Bloomberg-compiled data show. Issuance in 2020 will likely reach similar levels, said June Won, managing director of Citigroup Global Markets Korea Securities Ltd. More than $25 billion of Korean offshore notes fall due in 2020, the most in three years.
While Asia’s fourth-largest economy probably grew at the slowest pace in a decade last year, investors like it that the nation is one of only a few in Asia with double-A credit scores. Despite concerns about North Korea, South Korean notes are seen as safe-haven assets by some.