Merrill wins SingTel auction

Merrill wins SingTel auction

HONG KONG (Reuters): Merrill Lynch has won an auction, beating
five other investment banks, to sell US$440 million of Singapore
Telecommunications Ltd bonds, sources close to the deal said on
Wednesday.

"Basically, Merrill had to bid in an auction along with five
other houses and bought them from Cable & Wireless and then we
sold it out," a source at Merrill Lynch told Reuters. "It was a
forward sale of SingTel bonds."

Cable and Wireless will receive the bonds as a result of
SingTel's $9 billion acquisition of its Cable & Wireless Optus
Ltd business.

Traders said formal pricing of the bonds, which were sold in
two tranches of $220 million each, took place in New York on
Tuesday.

The five year bonds were priced at 55 basis points over Libor
and the seven year bonds were placed at 65 basis points over
Libor.

The pricing implied a 25 bps pick up for Cable and Wireless.

Cable and Wireless had got the five and seven year papers at
80 and 90 bps over Libor, the source said.