Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance company under government control, raised $10 billion selling three-year reference notes in its largest debt offering, Bloomberg reported.
"Frankly, I was surprised it got this big," Peter Federico, the McLean, Virginia-based company's treasurer, said in a telephone interview today. Investors offered to buy 30 percent more debt than was sold, he said.
The notes, which mature March 23, 2012, were priced to yield 2.247 percent, or 88 basis points more than three-year Treasuries, the company said today in a statement. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point. The yield is lower relative to benchmarks than in Freddie's last sale of similar-maturity debt.
Investors have shown increased interest in so-called agency debt -- mainly the borrowing of Freddie, competitor Fannie Mae and the Federal Home Loan Bank system -- "right from the beginning of the year," Federico said.
The reasons include an overall improvement in the debt markets, reduced concern that government-guaranteed bank debt would "crowd out" agency debt and a Federal Reserve program to purchase as much as $100 billion of the securities, he said.
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