Americas

Power company Genneia has become the latest Argentine company to look to refinance bonds with an exchange considered distressed by rating agencies, as capital controls in the country limit corporate issuers’ access to hard currency. Unusually, the distressed exchange will result in the issuance of green bonds.

Andrés Pérez, who has led Chile through two consecutive record breaking years of international bond issuance, has left his position as head of international finance at the Latin American sovereign to become chief economist at Itaú Chile.

An international consortium is seeking a $275m loan to support its acquisition of DuPont Clean Technologies.

US-listed hybrid electric vehicle maker Li Auto has hit the road for its Hong Kong secondary listing. The deal could raise around HK$13.1bn ($1.68bn) based on the last close of its US stock.

China’s securities regulator is pushing for closer co-operation with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to support overseas listings.

TechnipFMC, the French-US energy technologies group, executed on Thursday night its second block sale of shares in Technip Energies, the engineering and construction subsidiary it span off in February. Despite the holiday season, the parent achieved a fractionally higher price than in the last trade and a significantly tighter discount.

It is difficult these days, if not impossible, to find a bank that does not have an official policy or target to boost diversity and inclusion. By pushing them out of their comfort zones, could the pandemic help finally turn these aspirations into reality?

Morgan Stanley ventured north of the 49th parallel this week to visit a Maple bond market that is on course for its busiest year for financial institutions issuance since the 2008 financial crisis.

As sustainability-linked bond issuance gains momentum in emerging markets, questions are being asked about the product and its potential for innovation. The next iteration could see a feature already accepted in the loan market but not yet in bonds: a margin step-down.

Investment banks are broadening the search for talent and tweaking their recruitment message to attract and retain the bankers of the future, as working conditions and corporate culture emerge as hot topics after a difficult period for staff in the industry.

Export Development Canada (EDC) sold the first offshore Chilean peso bond of the year as it dropped into the currency in search of short dated borrowing earlier this week.

Aligning with a global commercial bank has been on Jefferies’ agenda for several years, but its alliance with SMBC signals an intent to join the investment banking big league. By David Rothnie.