Corporate bonds exceed the value of 400 million euros

2026-05-05 07:12:00, Ekonomi CNA

According to data from the Financial Supervisory Authority (AMF), the portfolio of privately offered bonds, calculated as the issued and outstanding value, reached 39.1 billion lek or almost 404 million euros. Last year alone, the value of the bond portfolio increased by 10.7 billion lek or 38%.

Legally, private placement bonds can be issued by joint stock companies and offered for sale to institutional investors and up to 100 individuals. In Albania, they began to be used at the end of 2011 and the main issuers have been banks and financial institutions. The buyers of these instruments have usually been individuals, but there has also been a lack of businesses or institutional investors, such as insurance companies or investment funds.

Adding the first public bond offering, issued in 2023 by the financial institution NOA, the total value of corporate debt securities has now reached around 39.6 billion lek.

According to information from the AFSA, there are currently 12 active issuers of private placement bonds in the market, of which 7 are banks, 3 are non-bank financial institutions and 2 are commercial companies. During 2025, the Authority registered 10 offer documents prepared by 4 issuing banks, which continued to be the most frequent issuers for regulatory capital purposes.

Banks have used these instruments especially in function of the need to increase regulatory capital. The Regulation “On Capital Adequacy” recognizes subordinated debt instruments as part of banks' regulatory capital, up to one third of the total value of regulatory capital.

This use has increased particularly after 2019, when the application of macroprudential capital additions began. Meanwhile, the five largest banks are also subject to the regulation on minimum requirements for regulatory capital instruments and eligible liabilities (MREL). This regulation was part of the legal framework of extraordinary intervention and requires banks to hold regulatory capital instruments or eligible liabilities that enable the absorption of losses and the restoration of the capital adequacy ratio.

The two above regulations encouraged more use of subordinated debt instruments by banks as an alternative to new capital injections.

The use of subordinated debt is also a mechanism that creates space for the distribution of dividends to shareholders, precisely because part of the regulatory capital requirement is covered through this debt.

More sporadically, companies outside the financial sector have also used bond issuance as an alternative form of borrowing./Monitor.al

Corporate bonds exceed the value of 400 million euros