[2007-12-24]  Housing Finance to List Sh30b Bond
HOUSING Finance Company of Uganda (HFCU) plans to list a sh30b corporate bond in January in search for long-term funds to cater for increasing appetite for mortgage financing.

"Housing Finance has applied to the Uganda Securities Exchange (USE) to list a sh30b bond.


"Once the process is complete, we expect the listing to be in January 2008. There are many developments lined up in 2008 and many other companies will come on board," Simon Rutega, the USE chief executive officer, disclosed last week.

If listed, the bond would bring the number of corporate bonds on the exchange to four after the uganda telecom, East African Development Bank and Standard Chartered Bank bonds.

Nicholas Okwir, the HFCU chief executive officer, confirmed the development. He explained that they were looking for long-term finance to meet the mortgage market demand.

"The bond is intended to look for long-term finance with maturity of 10 years.

"We want to maintain two lines of business, mortgage and banking services.

"There is very high demand for mortgage financing and the bond will cater for that," Okwir said.

Andrew Owiny, the executive director of the MBEA Brokerage Services, said the first tranche of sh5b would be issued before the end of the year.

Housing Finance has grown from a small motgage credit-institution 40 years ago, to a fully-fledged commercial bank.

The bank has changed its name from Housing Finance Company of Uganda to Housing Finance Bank Ltd.

The commercial bank operations will commence on January 2, 2008, officials said.







Source: Copyright © 2007 New Vision