Americas

CPPIB Capital, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, dived into the long end of the sterling bond market on Monday for a bumper follow-up to January’s jumbo debut.

Over 90% of Ecuador’s external bondholders agreed to a consent solicitation that expired at 5pm New York time on Friday, more than enough to allow the government to delay all coupon payments until August. A more comprehensive debt reprofiling will follow.

Kingsoft Cloud Holdings has launched a virtual pre-deal investor education process for its $100m Nasdaq IPO, according to a source close to the deal.

After making investors wait until the end of Friday's trading session that saw a strong bid for its bonds, Argentina finally proposed terms on its mammoth external debt restructuring. With early recovery rate estimates in the 30%-35% range, investors did not even wait until the weekend was over to express their discontent.

Bondholders are expected to fight a formal restructuring proposal from the Argentine government that should arrive on Friday and proposes heavy haircuts, say market participants. Argentina’s government appears ready to play hard ball.

Bond markets handsomely rewarded Peru on Thursday for leading the way in Latin America on economic policy reaction to the Covid-19 crisis, notching its lowest ever dollar funding costs. As Peru’s public treasury director said the deal was to increase already substantial liquidity buffers, Lat Am bankers were left hoping the result would encourage more reluctant issuers.

The chief financial officer of Banco Santander México told GlobalCapital that the lender had decided to get ahead of a possible surge in demand for credit by issuing the largest ever bond by a Mexican bank on Tuesday.

The record-breaking pace of issuance in the dollar bond market continued this week, as companies stricken by the coronavirus crisis were welcomed by investors with open arms.

High quality Yankee issuers showed their spirit of adventure by printing front-end trades this week, returning to a part of the curve that has been starved of supply since the start of the coronavirus crisis.

US banks this week reported stellar returns from trading and underwriting in the first quarter, even as the bottom line was hit by gigantic writedowns and reserves for credit losses, as the economic and financial disruption from the coronavirus crisis took its toll.

Banks have been building their financial sponsor coverage teams on a record period of deal making. Now they have a different fight on their hands, but bankers are playing down the threat of a 2008-style meltdown, writes David Rothnie.

GSX Techedu, a Chinese kindergarten to 12th grade after-school tutoring platform, has been targeted by a US short-seller for allegedly inflating its revenue. The company has denied the allegations.