Americas

Europe’s banks continued to lose global significance, according to the Financial Stability Board’s 2018 list of global systemically important banks (G-SIBs), although Groupe BPCE was re-added to the list. The French bank says this will not affect its funding plans.

Regulators' attempts to incentivise market participants to clear derivatives centrally have broadly worked, according to global watchdogs, though there are lingering concerns.

In this round-up, wealthy Chinese individual investors now have access to local government bonds, Russian and Chinese leaders in the financial industry are meeting to strengthen mutual market access, and northbound trading volume via Stock Connect reached Rmb8.77tn.

The two A-rated new issues shown to Lat Am bond buyers last week both traded well on Friday, but it was a different story for the bulk of the region as bankers have little hope of deals during the Thanksgiving week.

A strong bond market return from Bermuda on Thursday did little to cheer Latin America DCM bankers about prospects for the rest of the year as Brazilian paper company Klabin became the latest company from the region to wait after completing investor meetings.

Latin American DCM bankers say that continued debt buy-backs by Brazilian companies are creating strong technicals that should put the market in good stead for next year.

South American development bank Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF) sold its first public dollar deal in a year on Thursday, raising $750m despite tough market conditions.

Colombo-Canadian oil and gas company Frontera Energy’s attempt to grant itself the power to make larger payments to shareholders is an aggressive move, said bankers as Fitch highlighted it would be a credit negative.

A slide in the price of oil has put pressure on energy-related bonds in the US high yield market, which contains a large proportion of energy issuers.

The first US Access to Nutrition Index has been published for investors, aiming to guide them on which big food companies are doing better and worse at feeding the American public healthily.

Recent deterioration in credit quality, deal terms and potential recovery rates may be storing up trouble in the leveraged loan market but market sources in Europe fear that many of their peers are taking on these risks with no heed to their future impact.

The dollar bond market was brought to a standstill on Thursday, capping a tough week that saw around 15 borrowers abandon funding plans due to volatility.