Market Trends 2019/20: Medium-Term Note Programs

This market trends article examines recent trends regarding medium-term note programs (MTN programs), providing an overview of the market in 2019 and 2020 with a focus on general deal structure and process, recent deal terms, and disclosure trends. Financial service companies, such as bank holding companies, continued to use medium-term note programs as their vehicles for issuing large, underwritten offerings of notes as well as structured notes in 2019. A significant change occurred in 2019 and early 2020: the addition of new provisions adding the secured overnight financing rate (SOFR) as a new base rate for issues of floating rate notes, in anticipation of the replacement of U.S. dollar LIBOR.