DUBAI- The Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (APICORP), a Saudi-headquartered multilateral development bank, began marketing benchmark five-year U.S. dollar-denominated bonds on Tuesday, a document showed.

APICORP gave initial price guidance of around 130 basis points (bps) over midswaps for the notes, the document from one of the banks arranging the sale showed.

APICORP is taking indications of interest and the deal is expected to close on Wednesday.

In April, APICORP hired Citi, Goldman Sachs and Standard Chartered to arrange investor calls for a potential bond sale. 

Those banks are acting as global coordinators and are joined by Emirates NBD Capital as joint lead managers and joint bookrunners.

Sources said APICORP was waiting for a better window to issue as it disagreed with investors on pricing, but the debt markets have improved significantly since.

Two sources familiar with the matter said investors wanted a spread of more than 200 bps and APICORP wanted a spread of 100 bps.

(Reporting by Yousef Saba; Editing by Alex Richardson and David Evans) ((Yousef.Saba@thomsonreuters.com; +971562166204))