Piraeus Bank Priced a €500mn 6 Non-Call 5 Year Tenor Senior Preferred Bond at a Spread of 90bps
Piraeus Bank Priced a €500mn 6 Non-Call 5 Year Tenor Senior Preferred Bond at a Spread of 90bps
Piraeus Bank (OTC:BPIRF, BPIRY) priced a new €500 million Senior Preferred Bond with a fixed annual coupon of 4.00%, a 6-year maturity and a non-call period of 5 years.
Total orders above €2.5 billion, more than 5.0x covered — the tightest Senior Preferred spread ever achieved by Piraeus
ATHENS, Greece--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Piraeus Bank S.A. (“Piraeus” or the “Bank”) announces that, it has successfully completed the pricing of a new €500 million Senior Preferred Bond (the “Bond”) with an annual fixed coupon at 4.00%, attracting the interest of a large number of institutional investors.
The Bond has a maturity of 6 years and an embedded issuer call option after 5 years. Settlement will take place on 3 September 2026 and the notes will be listed on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange’s Euro MTF market. The Bond is expected to be assigned an investment grade rating of “Baa2” from Moody’s Ratings.
The net proceeds of the issuance will be allocated to general corporate and financing purposes and to ensure ongoing compliance with the MREL requirement.
The new Piraeus Senior Preferred Bond has attracted significant interest from more than 130 institutional investors, with 55% placed among asset managers, 25% to banks and private banks, 16% to Insurers and Pension Funds, and 4% to other investors. International institutional investors were allocated 85% of the issue, with demand stemming mainly from France (24%), DACH1 (17%), and Benelux2 (13%).
The transaction is the Bank's first issuance since Piraeus attained full investment grade status across all rating agencies, and its first bond issue of 2026. The total order book of the transaction peaked at more than €2.5bn, representing over 5.0x oversubscription relative to the issuance target of €500mn issuance size. The Bond was ultimately priced at a credit spread of 90bps over the corresponding mid-swap rate, significantly tighter than the initial guidance of +115-120bps. This is the tightest-ever spread achieved by Piraeus on a Senior Preferred issuance, and the tightest-ever Senior Preferred out of Greece, for the same tenor bucket. The final coupon has been set at 4.00% with a reoffer price at 99.902.
BNP PARIBAS, Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE, J.P. Morgan, Natixis (B&D), Santander, UBS Investment Bank acted as joint bookrunners of the issue. Ambrosia Capital and Piraeus Bank acted as co-leads. A&O Shearman and Bernitsas Law Firm acted as legal advisors to Piraeus.
A senior preferred bond is a debt security that gives its holders a higher claim on a company’s cash and assets than many other creditors, so they are paid before lower-ranking debt if the company runs into trouble. For investors this usually means more safety and lower returns compared with lower-priority bonds—think of it as standing earlier in line at a bakery, which reduces the risk of coming away empty-handed but also yields a smaller share of the profits.
investment gradefinancial
A credit rating label assigned to bonds or borrowers that signals relatively low risk of default; think of it as a strong health check for a company's or government's ability to repay debt. It matters to investors because investment-grade status typically means lower interest costs for the borrower, greater eligibility for conservative funds and pension portfolios, and generally more stable returns compared with higher-risk, non-investment-grade debt.
Minimum Requirement for own funds and Eligible Liabilities (MREL) is a regulatory standard that forces banks to hold a buffer of capital and debt that can absorb losses or be written down if the bank fails. Think of it like a combined savings account and emergency loan line that regulators require so creditors and investors, rather than taxpayers, bear the cost when a bank gets into trouble. For investors, MREL influences how risky a bank’s bonds and shares appear and can affect debt pricing, recovery prospects in a failure, and the bank’s capacity to lend or return capital.
mid-swap ratefinancial
The mid-swap rate is the midpoint between the rates at which buyers and sellers are willing to fix interest payments in an interest-rate swap, effectively the market’s neutral fixed rate for exchanging variable and fixed cash flows. Investors use it as a common benchmark to value loans with changing interest, price interest-rate contracts and gauge market expectations about future rates—like using the average of store prices to judge a fair market price.
