German Private Placement 2020 (Schuldscheindarlehen)
In February 2020 CLAAS successfully returned to the market for German Private Placements with a transaction of 250 million Euros. A comfortably oversubscribed order book documented the strong demand of investors for the transaction.
The proceeds were used for general corporate purposes and refinancing of the earlier Schuldschein tranches maturing in August 2020 (issued in 2015).
Some 70 domestic and international institutional investors participated in the transaction. The four Schuldschein tranches mature between 2027 and 2029, three of them are equipped with a fixed coupon and one with a floating coupon. Credit spreads were all fixed at the low end of the bookbuilding ranges. Coupons range from 0.6% to 0.75% p.a.
Besides the classical sales channels of the banks arranging the transaction, it was also marketed on the digital platform DEBTVISION.
As an option CLAAS offered a so-called forward-tranche in order to give earlier investors a chance to re-invest their funds as per August 2020. At the same time the forward-tranche optimized interest expense for CLAAS until the maturity of the preceding Schuldschein issued in 2015. The forward-tranche was well received by the market. Its 6 month forward-period represented the longest forward-period without spread-compensation in the corporate Schuldschein market until then.
