On November 7, Korea Eximbank (www.koreaexim.go.kr, Chairman & President Yong Hwan Kim) successfully issued a USD 612 million Uridashi Bond for individual Japanese investors.

* Uridashi Bond: bond issued in various currencies and sold in small amounts to individual investors in Japan. Only international organizations and institutions rated over AA can issue the bond. Korea Eximbank is the sole issuer of the Uridashi Bond in Korea.

Chairman Yong Hwan Kim met with Daiwa Securities President Shin Yoshidome at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and signed a contract for bond issuance.

The bond issuance is significant in that Korea Eximbank successfully secured large-scale funding from wealthy individuals thanks to the Bank’s high credit rating and strong reputation in Japan despite difficult circumstances such as the recent downgrade of US credit ratings and the crisis in Europe stemming from Greece.

This successful bond issuance can be attributed to active exchange of information and human resources with Japan. For example, the JBIC-Korea Eximbank Joint Seminar for Joint Entry into Overseas Markets was held last June and MOUs with Japanese financial institutions were concluded.

Besides tapping into the Japan market, Korea Eximbank preemptively secured six billion dollars (65% of 9.2 billion dollars, the total financed amount in foreign currencies as of the end of October 2011) in 2011 through exploration of non-dollar niche markets such as the Middle East, Switzerland, Brazil, etc.,

The Uridashi Bond is denominated in four currencies, the Australian dollar, New Zealand dollar, Brazilian real, and Turkish lira, with a 0.5% more favorable interest rate than that of a US dollar bond.

Moreover, in order to accommodate diverse investment demands of individual investors, the Bank issued the bond under varied maturity periods of three, five, and six years and four types of currency with six different terms and conditions.

A representative from the Bank stated, “Through continued IR efforts targeting individual investors, we will expand our investor base to steadily increase our issuance scale of the Uridashi Bond.”

* The Swedish Export Credit Corporation raised 6 billion dollars through the Uridashi Bond in the Japanese market. The amount accounted for 46% of 13 billion dollars, the total amount raised in foreign currencies in 2010.

Korea Eximbank issued a 480 million dollar (40 billion yen) Uridashi Bond last January as the first Korean institution to issue the bond. This year, the Bank issued the bond in the amount of 1.2 billion dollars, thus establishing a foundation for further bond issuance in Japan, the second largest individual investor market in the world.