Africa Bonds

The Middle East and North Africa region will provide a large chunk of emerging market bond supply in 2019, investors said this week. The region provides excellent value, in spite of fluctuations in the oil price.

Georges Elhedery will be moving from Dubai to London in order to take up a new role as head of global markets at HSBC. He replaces Thibaut de Roux, who reportedly left in September after an accusation of inappropriate conduct.

CDC, a development financial institution, has hired a former regional head of global banking at Standard Chartered to mobilise investment in developing countries.

Egypt is revamping its capital markets presence, lining up a debut in the green bond market, a first deal in an Asian currency, and dollar and euro benchmarks all by the end of its fiscal year in June.

Renaissance Capital has hired a former Morgan Stanley managing director to the roles of chairman of the board of directors for South Africa and head of investment banking for Africa. The hire marks the latest development in the bank’s push into Africa.

Ghanaian banks’ avenues for dollar funding could be set to grow, after one of the country’s financial institutions entered into a total return swap with Société Générale that soothed over bottlenecks in its repo markets.

Thirteen emerging market sovereigns will face their first bond market redemptions over the next seven years and, with financing conditions set to become more difficult, market participants are watching them carefully.

The party looks to be over in emerging market bonds leaving borrowers with one heck of a funding hangover. Years of low rates have prompted a debt splurge from borrowers able to fund at ever lower coupons. But just as dollar rates are on the increase, those credits are racing towards a $2tr maturity wall and the problem of how to refinance it in a market that has presented clear symptoms of risk fatigue this year shows no sign of abating. Lewis McLellan and Francesca Young report.

Société Générale has agreed to pay $1.34bn in fines and an enhanced monitoring programme for violating US sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Myanmar and North Korea, according to notices issued by US agencies on Monday.

Rating: B2/B/B+

Nigeria was on Wednesday able to print the full size of the bond issue approved by its parliament, paying up for the privilege but drawing praise for managing a market that proved too tough for many.

MetLife, the US insurance company, has made an unusual investment as part of its impact investment portfolio, which has about $200m of assets. It is providing a revolving credit facility to an impact investment fund, to enable it to cope more easily with redemptions.