Americas

Crédit Agricole is opening representative offices in Colombia and Chile, the lender said on Monday, as its looks to improve strengthen client relationships in the countries.

Carlos Vargas, most recently a managing director in Mizhuo’s Latin American debt capital markets team, has joined Oppenheimer & Co also as a managing director covering Lat Am DCM, GlobalCapital understands.

Petroquímica Comodoro Rivadavia (PCR), the Argentine energy company, will hit the road on Wednesday ahead of a planned debut international bond sale, with compatriot and peer company Capex expected to provide the closest comparison.

After strong first quarter results and in a receptive high yield market, online streaming service Netflix announced a new $1.5bn 10.5 year senior unsecured bond on Monday to finance new content for the platform, eventually walking away with $1.9bn.

Argentina’s new issue pipeline is showing further signs of picking up, with the Province of Córdoba understood to be weighing up the possibility of a return to markets, according to bond players.

Latin America’s only new issue of the week was down in the grey market on Thursday, despite investors singing the praises of the credit as bankers said the region’s bond markets were struggling to gain momentum in the face of bulging pipeline.

Three Argentine companies are preparing off-shore bond issues and others continue to approve bond shelves as a near three month break in new issue activity from the country could soon come to an end.

After selling €4.6bn of loans in March, Unilever Spreads unveiled the €1bn high yield bond portion of its leveraged buyout funding package on Wednesday. But as well as jumbo deals, other borrowers with smaller offerings are also vying for investor attention.

One of the drawbacks of the strong growth in interest in responsible investing is that many investors only want to take conventional kinds of risk — such as buying large, liquid equities or investment grade bonds. But a report out this week suggests even small, obscure impact investments have a safe risk profile — perhaps even better than mainstream investments.

Swiss seed company Syngenta enjoyed a bumper order book as it printed a $4.75bn bond six months after abandoning its first attempt.

The European Central Bank’s Ad Visser acknowledged its "flexible" approach to covered bond purchases at the European Covered Bond Council’s plenary meeting held in Vancouver on Wednesday. His remark was made in response to a question about whether the ECB was reducing its primary market orders by 10% to a maximum of 30% of a deal’s size.

Allen & Overy, IHS Markit and Smart Communications subsidiary SmartDX on Thursday announced that they had launched a platform to speed up the repapering of derivatives contracts, in anticipation of new regulatory requirements.