Bond Market News

Emirates NBD (ENBD) was upgraded to A2 from A3 by Moody’s, driven by the upgrade to ENBD’s Baseline Credit Assessment (BCA) and Adjusted BCA. This comes on the back of a “significant decline in related party exposures” to AED 140bn ($38.1bn) as of March 2022 (180% of Tier 1 capital) from AED 162bn ($4bn) as of September 2021 (199% of Tier 1 capital). This is expected to further decrease in the coming quarters. It also comes on the back of resilience and improvement in the bank’s profitability driven by strong and growing domestic franchise. ENBD had strong net interest margins (NIMs) at 2.4% Q1 2022 vs. 1.9% for the UAE system average. The rising rate environment is expected to support this backdrop. Moody’s also notes that ENBD has “solid capitalization, funding and liquidity” and is expected to remain strong over the next 12-18 months.

Emirates NBD’s dollar bonds were stable with its 4.25% Perp at 93.77, yielding 5.76%.