KUALA LUMPUR, May 13 — The government has picked CIMB and HSBC to arrange a sovereign dollar bond sale which would be of a “decent benchmark size,” a source familiar with the plan said today.

The government has not decided when to launch the sale given current market volatility, the source said.

The exact issuance size has not been finalised, although it is likely to be smaller than national oil firm Petronas’s recent US$4.5 billion (RM14.4 billion) issue, the source said.

“It will come, it’s just a question of timing,” said the source. “(The government) doesn’t want to launch into a major market environment.”

The source said the government had not decided if the sale would consist of both conventional and Islamic paper, or only sukuk.

A second source whose bank bid for the deal, but did not get it said that CIMB and HSBC had won the mandate.

CIMB and HSBC declined to comment. Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had said in April Malaysia would likely tap global bond markets by offering a US dollar Islamic bond to test investor appetite for its assets. — Reuters