France Télécom drives down cost of funding

Despite paying investors a substantial premium over government bonds and even its peer group, France Télécom is shaving the cost of its $16.4bn (€17.6bn) bond issue.

When the French telecommunications provider priced the sterling tranche of its record-breaking corporate bond on Tuesday, it lowered the spread premium over the reference mid swap rate to 193 basis points. The market had previously expected at least 200bps.

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