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Wednesday, November 4, 2009 11:15 AM

Shaw back with new bond offering

Andrew Willis

Cable companies continue to blitz the corporate bond market, with Shaw Communications marketing $500-million of 30-year bonds on Wednesday.

TD Securities and RBC Dominion Securities are leading the Shaw offering and it’s expected to yield 285 basis points over the comparable government of Canada bond. That translates into an interest rate in the 7.85 per cent range. The issue could be bumped to $650-million if there is strong investor demand, according to fixed income traders.

This is the latest in a series of bond financings from the sector, as Rogers Communications raised $1-billion with two bond offerings last week. The over-arching theme on all these deals is the capital-intensive cable sector moving to Canadian dollar-denominated borrowing, and retiring U.S. dollar-denominated bonds. That shift reduces currency risk, as customers pay their cable and phone bills in Canadian dollars.

Prior to Wednesday’s offering, Rogers and Shaw had raised $3.85-billion in domestic debt markets so far this year. That accounts for 8.5 per cent of all the corporate debt sold on Canadian markets, according to Desjardins Securities.

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Streetwise Contributors

Andrew Willis

Andrew Willis joined The Globe and Mail in September of 1995. His career has included stints at a number of publications, including The Financial Post, The Financial Times of Canada, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, and MacLean's magazine. He also did freelance writing for Investment Executive magazine. He appears on television for BNN TV and CBC Newsworld.

Andrew has co-written a book, The Bre-X Fraud, with business journalist Douglas Goold.

Read Streetwise Tuesday through Friday in the pages of Report on Business.

 
Boyd Erman

Boyd Erman

Boyd Erman is a long-time business journalist who has worked at Dow Jones, Bloomberg, and the National Post before joining the Globe and Mail. Over the years, his areas of coverage have included economics, monetary policy, debt markets and corporate finance.

In addition, he is a regular commentator and guest host on Business News Network.

 

Steve Ladurantaye

Steve Ladurantaye wrote about technology companies in Ottawa before reporting for the Peterborough Examiner and Kingston Whig-Standard, where he won a National Newspaper Award for explanatory journalism. After joining the Globe and Mail in 2007, his work has regularly appeared in Report On Business and Globe Investor Magazine.

 
Globe and Mail reporter Tara Perkins

Tara Perkins

Tara Perkins has been a business reporter since 2004, following a brief stint as overnight editor of globeandmail.com. She has been writing for the Globe's business section since the spring of 2007, covering the banking sector during the course of the financial crisis. Prior to that, she worked for the Toronto Star. Tara has a Bachelor of Journalism from Ryerson University and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Guelph.

 
 

Jacquie McNish

Jacquie McNish has been a business writer with The Globe and Mail since 1988. Prior to that she was a reporter with The Wall Street Journal.

During her time at The Globe and Mail, she has served as the paper's New York correspondent and won three National Newspaper Awards. She is the author of The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey's Bay Hustle and Wrong Way: The Fall of Conrad Black, for which she and co-author Sinclair Stewart won the National Business Book Award. She is a co-host of Market Morning on the Business News Network.