Americas

The unexpected decision by Jim Yong Kim to stand down as World Bank president three years ahead of schedule will raise worries in the development community that Donald Trump will use the opportunity to select a political appointee. By Phil Thornton

A funding official at a Canadian public sector borrower is switching to another SSA in the country.

Chris Concannon, Cboe Global Markets' COO and president, will leave the exchange group next week to join electronic trading platform MarketAxess in the same roles.

Brazilian airline Gol Linhas Aéreas Inteligentes is set to continue its deleveraging process as it looks to repurchase the remainder of its bonds due in 2022.

Danske Bank is looking to issue a senior non-preferred bond, giving primary market investors a chance to judge the institution after developments in a money laundering scandal have raised the prospect of it receiving a large fine from US authorities. Danske follows BNP Paribas, which paid up to print a new deal on Thursday.

In this round-up, US and China agreed to hold trade talks in Beijing early next week, the central bank loosened the definition of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors (Nafmii) appointed a new party chief.

No Latin American borrowers dared to announce bond plans in the short first working week of 2019, but a flurry of pre-Christmas requests for proposals and the prospect of habitual January issuers tapping was enough to make syndicate bankers chirpier.

El Salvador’s Congress has approved the issuance of new external debt to enable it to refinance debt due later this year. That will mean one fewer headaches for whoever wins next month’s presidential elections.

Companies usually park their reserves of cash in staid, low-yielding liquid assets. But asset managers are trying to persuade them to invest some of that money differently, in a way that could help them live up to their environmental commitments.

Berkshire Hathaway was one of five issuers to brave choppy conditions on Thursday and open the dollar market with the first trades of 2019.

Latin American bond markets had a predictably quiet start to 2019 as DCM bankers are focussing firmly on next week for any new supply, but early signs suggested that Brazil would continue to be the outperformer.

The Options Clearing Corp (OCC) had a big year in 2018, with cleared options volumes beating record levels set in 2011.