Americas

Brazilian government-owned oil company Petrobras will repurchase nearly half of its 2023s after wrapping up the first stage of a tender offer that could total $4.5bn.

This year’s bull market in credit and equities stems from central banks trying to soften the blow of a downturn, rather than from expectations of actual growth. This irony cannot last, for reasons of economics, policy and politics.

Lyft, the US ride sharing app, has hit the gas on its Nasdaq IPO this week, which promises to be the largest technology listing in New York since Alibaba floated in 2014. The deal is a fee bonanza for Lyft’s banks but it has also reignited the debate about dual class share structures. The LSE and UK regulators should maintain corporate governance standards, and resist competitive pressures to follow New York, Hong Kong and Singapore by allowing them.

Lat Am bond bankers and investors may not have found an answer to Monday’s hot topic of the subordination premium on AES Gener’s junior subordinated hybrid, but the issuer left no doubts about the market’s appetite for paper with a highly oversubscribed trade.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp has agreed a deal to provide post-trade infrastructure services to enable SEB, the Swedish banking group, to meet its obligations under the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation.

US Solar Fund, the new investment trust focused on US solar power assets, has extended the bookbuilding period for its $250m IPO on the London Stock Exchange, citing political and economic uncertainty caused by the Brexit process in the UK.

Government-owned Costa Rican lender Banco Nacional de Costa Rica (BNCR) will wrap up a tender offer for its dollar bonds ahead of schedule after the early-bird stage of the buy-back was oversubscribed.

The Japanese Financial Services Agency (JFSA) published risk retention rules on Friday that allow Japanese investors to avoid capital charges even if they buy debt from non-risk retention compliant deals.

In this round-up, trade talks between the United States and China continued, the Foreign Investment Law was passed by the National People’s Congress and the US urged Germany to ban Huawei

More Latin American issuers could look for 30 year debt in international markets, said DCM bankers after Petrobras sold its first new note at that point of the curve since 2014.

Banco do Brasil returned to dollar markets on Wednesday, taking advantage of scarcity value to snatch a tight five year senior unsecured benchmark.

Cement company Cemex brought hope for the Mexican bond pipeline as it turned to Europe to become the first Mexican credit to issue internationally since January, while the sovereign also crossed the Atlantic for investor meetings this week.