Reuters reported that Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal will be holding next month a rare site visit for bond investors. The presentations could be followed by Australian dollar bond issuance depending on feed back.

ANZ Institutional Bank and Westpac Institutional Bank are jointly hosting the visit in the northeast state of Queensland on October 12th 2010 and October 13th 2010. The finance arm of the terminal, called DBCT Finance, is rated BBB-plus by S&P and Baa2 by Moody's. The borrower, previously known as BBI Finance Pty Limited, has AUD 1.8 billion in debt. DBCT is 50.1% owned by Prime Infrastructure, formerly known as Babcock & Brown Infrastructure, with the balance held by Brookfield Asset Management Inc.

Infrastructure projects in Australia have traditionally been financed with bank debt and credit wrapped bonds a form of debt that is backed by triple A rated financial guarantees. Since the global credit crisis hit, most wrappers or global bond insurers, have collapsed due to massive losses, leaving most of the infrastructure financing to banks alone. An increasing number of Australian borrowers, formerly sellers of wrapped debt, have this year been issuing bonds in their own right.

Just this week, Dampier to Bunbury Natural Gas Pipeline raised a surprising large issue of AUD 550 million in five year notes. This was the first bond sale by a non-financial issuer rated BBB-minus since 2006. Bond issues by non financial borrowers are rare in Australia and account for less than 5% of this year's AUD 73 billion issuance. Sydney Airport is another issuer that is currently meeting with US investors ahead of an expected offer.

(Sourced from www.reuters.com)