During the course of 2020, Malta’s corporate bond market was naturally severely impacted by the pandemic. As I highlighted in some articles over the past few months, during the start of the pandemic in early March 2020, there were double-digit declines in the prices of various corporate bonds as a result of the understandable huge concern among retail investors about the unprecedented circumstances that were being experienced.
However, following the sharp sell-off, investor sentiment somewhat improved and many corporate bond prices recovered with some bonds also trading back up above their par value during the second half of the year. On the other hand, though, other bonds still remain below their par value with the clear outlier being Melite Finance plc which last traded at 80 per cent due to the huge negative impact on their business in Italy and the bond restructuring plans which were initially outlined in the 2019 Annual Report published on June 30, 2020.