The pricing of the deal, at 43bp over one-month Libor, represents a significant hike in spreads. Before the summer, investors were willing to pick up Korean cross-border deals for around 12bp over Libor. Even so, a source close to the transaction says that Samsung Card is still getting relatively cheap funding thanks to the favourable swap rate back into won.
Indeed, LG Card also has a $500 million deal in the pipeline, led by BNP Paribas and JPMorgan. The Samsung Card deal has a similar structure to earlier Korean card deals. It is rated triple-A by Moody's and Standard & Poor's, with a 3.1-year expected average life û 33 months interest-only and a six-month amortising period. The notes are issued by Frontier XI, a Cayman special purpose company, and are backed by credit card payments.
It is ING's first cross-border deal since the scrapping of a $1 billion Kookmin Bank mortgage securitisation in June.
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