German Rail Operator Issues $388 Million in Negative Yielding Bonds

Free money for Deutsche Bahn. I’m sure this perversion of finance ends supremely. Since Germany is the Mother Theresa of credit and everyone loves her, I don’t see how other European corporations could compete with their companies, who sport a capital structure which entails free money, unlimited. We hem and haw over Chinese companies dumping shit on our shores and how they great dog eating currency manipulators. But how is this better? This is far worse than subsidies. This is the fucking Elephant Man on the front page of GQ magazine.

($388 million) bond sale to funds, while banks bought 23 percent, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to discuss the offering. Investors in Germany and Austria bought most of the bonds.

Investors in the state-owned German rail operator will effectively pay to lend to the company after its bonds were sold to yield minus 0.006 percent on Tuesday. Yields on more than $10 trillion of sovereign and investment-grade corporate bonds have been driven to zero or below as central bank efforts to boost their economies inflate asset prices.

“It must feel awkward to be exposed to a credit risk and simultaneously lock in a guaranteed loss,” said Hyung-Ja de Zeeuw, an Amsterdam-based senior credit strategist at ABN Amro Bank NV. “It’s the world upside down: you issue bonds and you get money for free. It’s a result of unconventional policy.”

According to BofA, the average euro land investment grade yield is 0.8%.

This is fuckery of the very first magnitude.