Americas

Two A rated corporates went head to head in the euro corporate bond market on Monday as UK pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline and US electrical systems manufacturer United Technologies Corp both launched triple-tranche deals, with two matching maturities involved in the €4.5bn of bonds.

US and Yankee financials surprised to the upside with $15bn of dollar bond supply this week as they jumped into the market with front-end offerings ahead of a spike some expect in US Treasury yields.

The first two days of this week saw more than €10bn of bond issuance, with more than a quarter of that volume made up of three deals sold by auto finance issuers. All three deals managed to achieve new issue premiums of 10bp or less, which was tighter than the majority of deals the week before.

Foreign banks operating in the US could be allowed a more flexible funding structure, according to Randall Quarles, Federal Reserve vice-chairman for supervision. It could lower the cost of trapping liquidity and capital instruments in the intermediate holding companies (IHCs) they had to set up to keep operating in the US.

When the euro corporate market attempted to return to full speed after a pause on Wednesday, investors were given a tough choice between three triple-B rated issuers all selling seven year bonds and another selling a sub-benchmark five year tranche. The result was a bad one for issuers.

Mexican state owned oil company Pemex (Petróleos Mexicanos) raised €3.15bn ($3.722bn) across four tranches on Wednesday to provide some relief to a bruised and battered Lat Am bond market.

Pemex’s annual European outing on Wednesday came as a pleasant surprise to many Lat Am bond bankers, showing Lat Am issuers still have significant pulling power. But the euro market is unlikely to pull more borrowers from the region, even as dollar funding costs rocket.

Three big hitters from the exchange, index creation and asset management worlds have collaborated to launch futures contracts referencing indices for the US corporate bond markets.

US pharmaceuticals company Mylan made its third visit to the euro corporate bond market in three years on Wednesday when it sold a €500m seven year deal with a €1.3bn order book.

Unigel, the Brazilian petrochemicals company, completed an inaugural international bond sale on Tuesday in a deal with a highly targeted distribution after drastically sweetening terms for investors.

Royal Bank of Scotland was selling new senior unsecured bonds in the dollar market on Tuesday, building on a series of success prints from European financial institutions.

Peruvian agricultural company Camposol cancelled a proposed tender offer for existing bonds on Monday evening after failing to raise the debt required to finance the buyback.