Fidelity Bank Plc, on Thursday announced plans to launch $500m senior unsecured medium term debt notes and a tender offer to purchase its outstanding $300m 6.875% notes due on May 9, 2018.
A statement to the investing community through the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), said “the bank intends to utilize the net proceeds of the Notes to finance the tender offer of the existing notes and for its general banking purposes.”
It plans to pay the net proceeds from the notes issuance after setting the existing notes into a foreign currency domiciliary account which may be retained by the bank in foreign currency or converted into Naira.
This, it continued, will however depend on its requirement from time to time, adding that “a certificate of capital importation (CCI) will not be obtained in respect of the proceeds of the Notes that not converted into Naira because a CCI is only issued in respect of capital imported into Nigeria and converted into Naira.
Plans, Fidelity Bank said, are afoot to make principal repayment and interest payments on the notes from its foreign currency reserves, given that it would have no access to the nation’s foreign exchange market for the purpose of making such payments, except with prior approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), where it has insufficient forex reserves to meet principal and interest payments due on the notes.
The notes, which has received the blessings of the CBN and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), hopes to list them on the Irish Stock Exchange (ISE) to ensure the notes are traded on its regulated market