Americas

In this round-up, China and the United States emerged out of a two-day trade talk with a “phase one” deal, China’s securities regulator set dates for further opening up of onshore financial markets and the Monetary Authority of Macau plans to launch a Nasdaq-like stock exchange for the offshore renminbi market.

The six biggest US investment banks alongside three European firms have created DirectBooks to assist primary market bond sales. It aims to start in the US investment grade corporate market before branching out to other fixed income products.

In this round-up, Mainland Chinese partners cut ties with the National Basketball Association (NBA) after disagreements surrounding the Hong Kong protests, China’s foreign currency reserves fell in September and UBS has received the green light to trade global depositary receipts through the Shanghai-London Stock Connect.

In this round-up, vice premier Liu He started a two-day negotiation in Washington DC, the Chinese Ministry of Finance transferred 10% of its stake in Bank of Communications into a state-run fund and the National People’s Congress released draft rules to regulate state employees’ public discourse.

Latin American debt capital markets bankers say that the continued absence of Mexican retail and beverages conglomerate Femsa in primary markets could indicate lower risk appetite among investors as the year comes to a close.

One of the strongest credits in Argentina will seek to entice bondholders to push out maturities by turning a portion of its existing bond into cash and increasing the coupon on the remaining amount.

Colombian natural gas distribution company Promigas and Rutas 2 and 7, a securitization to finance a road in Paraguay, brought life to an otherwise subdued week in Latin American primary markets on Tuesday.

Dollar market stalwart PepsiCo took centre stage in an otherwise subdued week for new US bond issuance, as it pleased investors with its green debut.

Yankee banks took advantage of a strong market backdrop this week ahead of US third quarter earnings season, with Canadian banks leading the charge.

"Difficult" seems to be the word on the lips of every equity capital market participant this week. Bankers, including those working on super-yacht builder Ferretti's IPO, and deal sponsors have found themselves battling against weak investor sentiment, driven by poor trading in some new deals, market volatility and a desire among fund managers to protect their performance as the year end approaches, writes Sam Kerr.

Vinit Sahni, co-founder of fintech start-up Arkera and a former senior rates banker, says that his company will help bond buyers take advantage of, what he believes will be, an upturn in local currency bonds ahead of the US election.

The US’s announcement this week that it was putting a whole host of Chinese companies on its blacklist for alleged involvement in human rights abuses is set to hit some of them hard. One of the victims is artificial intelligence (AI) leader Megvii Technology, which has been working on a billion-dollar Hong Kong IPO that will now be a challenge. Jonathan Breen reports.