Calyon, joint bookrunner for a EUR 1.5 billion, ten-year bond issue by EDF

Context of the bond
Having last issued in March 2004 and with limited pure refinancing needs only, EDF wanted to avoid colliding with expected M&A-related utility primary activity that should occur after the full-year results' season. The company therefore decided to seize any issuance window before entering black-out period; consistent with the group activities' nature, the minimum tenor on a new transaction was set at 10-year.

Launch & execution process
After closely monitoring the market, the issuer decided, on Thursday January 24th, to authorize bookrunners to sound carefully selected investors on their potential interest for a new 10-year EDF benchmark. Feedback was outstandingly positive, and Calyon decided to go ahead with the deal. We released guidance at 10.00 a.m UKT on Friday, and closed the books 35 minutes later, after collecting around EUR 6 billion in orders with 185 investors. On the back of this very strong response, EDF decided to increase the size to EUR 1.5 billion; in line with marketing, in order to ensure a solid performance in the secondary market.

Order book
EDF achieved sound distribution, dominated by fund managers and insurance companies, and characterized by the virtually total absence of volatile accounts in the order book. As expected, demand had a pronounced domestic flavor, with French accounts representing almost half of final allocation