The Minister of Finance, Colm Imbert, says the data so far on the recent National Investment Fund 2 $400 million 5-year bond issue, which was offered to the public at an interest rate of 4.5% per annum, shows NIF2 has been a tremendous success.
NIF2 was designed to provide all citizens with a safe and high value investment instrument, using the people’s assets acquired from Clico.
As of Wednesday, the total applications for the $400 million available in NIF2 bonds had crossed ONE BILLION DOLLARS inclusive of over $700 million in applications from a total of 3,644 individual investors, with more applications to be tallied today.
This means that to date, NIF2 has been oversubscribed by 160% and when the final tally is done, the oversubscription may cross 170%.
The Finance Ministry said the success of NIF2 is an overwhelming vote of confidence in the National Investment Fund and by extension a vote of confidence in the Government’s management of the assets acquired by the Government in return for the money spent in the Clico bailout.
Since inception NIF has paid all semi-annual interest due on all NIF bonds on time and also paid bondholders in full for the first 5-year Series A NIF bonds when they matured in August 2023.
After the winding up in 2023 of the Clico Investment Fund, which was backed by 25% of the issued shares in Republic Financial Holdings Limited, NIF acquired a further 3.9% in RFHL, taking it to 29.9% of RFHL.
These additional shares in RFHL were the basis for NIF2.