Singapore's bond market continues to sizzle (Amended)

THE local bond market continues to sizzle even as interest rates rise to multi-year highs. In the three weeks of March, over S$2.4 billion was raised from 16 issues against S$1.6 billion and 13 deals in the same period last year.

The key three-month Sibor or Singapore interbank offered rate on Tuesday stood at slightly over one per cent, 2.2 times higher than 0.45 per cent at the beginning of the year. At one per cent, it has surged to a level not seen since December 2008.

Year to date, bond volumes are still behind that of the same period in 2014. From Jan 1 to March 24, there were 37 issues worth S$4.2 billion which is 72 per cent of the S$5.8 billion also raised from the same number of issues in 2014.

The three local banks hold the top three spots among the bond underwriter banks with OCBC Bank at No 1, followed by DBS Bank and United Overseas Bank (UOB).

OCBC's market share is 35 per cent, with S$1.5 billion from 17 issues, DBS's market share is 30 per cent with S$1.3 billion from 14 issues. UOB ranks third with 9 per cent market share; it helped raised S$387 million from eight deals.

The story above is the correct version.

Note: The previous article said that OCBS's market share is 35 per cent with S$1.4 billion from 17 issues, instead of S$1.5 billion.