Kuwaiti petrochemicals JV Equate plans to issue 10- and 30-year dollar-denominated bonds and five-year sukuk, according to a 24 March Reuters report. Equate has hired US banks Citi and JP Morgan, Japan’s MUFG and Kuwait’s KFH Capital and NBK Capital to lead the deal, which will also include First Abu Dhabi Bank, UK’s HSBC and Japan’s Mizuho and SMBC Nikko. The deal will reportedly be benchmark size, indicating at least $500mn per tranche. The debt issuance will be the “first from the Gulf in over a month” with bond sales slowed by the coronavirus pandemic and a sharp fall in oil prices.
Equate is a joint venture of state petchems firm PIC (45%), US firm Dow Chemical (45%) and Kuwaiti investors Boubyan (9%) and Qurain (6%) that operates a 1.7mn t/y ethane cracker and downstream units near the port of Shuaiba as well as ethylene glycol and propylene plants in North America and Korea (MEES, 8 February 2019). (CONTINUED - 156 WORDS)