Americas

ING left its investors bemused on Wednesday, when it decided to pull the additional tier one (AT1) bond it was marketing on the basis of undisclosed information it had received. After the news of its chief executive’s move to UBS quickly became public, the door was left open for the bank to complete the trade.

HSBC’s corporate finance staff have survived its restructuring largely unscathed, but the more ambitious among them will see the bank’s plans as a missed opportunity, writes David Rothnie. And with no answer yet on the identity of the next full-time CEO, the uncertainty is not over.

US corporate bond issuers set a blistering pace this week as crowded into the market in droves after Monday’s Presidents’ Day holiday.

Ontario Teachers’ Finance Trust has chosen four banks to organise a series of meetings with euro fixed income investors, ahead of what will be the issuer’s first bond in the currency.

A lack of credible internal candidates and a desire for stability across its divisions led UBS to cast the net wider to find a successor to chief executive Sergio Ermotti. It has appointed ING CEO Ralph Hamers.

UniCredit is making Algis Pabarcius its UK country head, replacing Christian Steffens, who is moving to head up corporate and investment banking for the Americas region.

The Mexican finance ministry will visit fixed income investors in Europe next week to present the framework under which it hopes to issue bonds designed to finance expenditure in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Latin America’s largest private sector lender Itaú returned to bond markets for the second time this year, following up January’s senior unsecured deal with an additional tier one perpetual note that was five times oversubscribed.

The US Treasury slapped sanctions on a Rosneft subsidiary on Tuesday for brokering sales of Venezuelan crude oil that supported president Nicolás Maduro’s government. Some expect this to be the first of similar actions, in the run up to the US presidential election.

Colombia consumer and payroll lender Credivalores will buy back nearly $155m of its senior unsecured bonds maturing in 2022 after completing a tender offer for the notes.

JP Morgan has promoted a whole new layer of leadership in its investment bank, reaching down to debt capital markets, equity capital markets and M&A. At the top of the tree, Carlos Hernandez has moved from being head of global investment banking to executive chair and has appointed new co-heads of global investment banking.

Apple’s announcement that it is likely to miss revenue estimates for the first quarter of 2020 should serve as a warning to equity investors that the economic effects of the coronavirus outbreak should be feared alongside any threat of it becoming a pandemic.