Americas

Rio Oil Finance Trust, the SPV through which Rio de Janeiro’s state pension fund RioPrevidencia issues bonds backed by royalties from state oil giant Petrobras, has a knack for timing.

Brazilian bonds rallied on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled that former president Lula Inácio da Silva must go to jail before exhausting his last appeal against a corruption conviction — effectively ruling him out of October’s presidential election.

Swiss telecoms provider Swisscomm found strong demand for its new corporate bond deal. However, investors were very clear on where they saw the value in the deal and the issuer had to pay significant spreads to ensure the deal’s success.

Mireille Dyrberg, the former COO of Nex Group fintech subsidiary TriOptima, has joined data reconciliation firm Duco.

Grupo Bimbo, the world’s largest bread maker, will begin meeting fixed income investors on Thursday as it plans a subordinated perpetual hybrid bond, just after Standard & Poor’s said the company was deleveraging more slowly than expected.

Argentina’s largest province is planning to issue around $496m of peso-denominated notes this week and will look to sell a portion of the bonds to international investors.

As volatility returned to financial markets, US derivatives exchange operator CME saw record average daily volume for derivative contracts in the first quarter of 2018, beating the same period last year by 30%.

The FANGs, the catchy grouping of high growth tech disruptors, may have made sense in the past but the unique pressures being faced by each business as it matures and the economic cycle turns should lead investors to differentiate more between the technology-enabled stars of the US equities market.

Walt Disney has thrown Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox a lifeline in its battle to acquire the remaining shares of Sky it does not own by offering to buy Sky News, putting pressure on the £22.1bn debt-backed offer for the whole of Sky from rival bidder Comcast.

Brazilian mining giant Vale has completed the buy-back of $1.75bn in dollar bonds after more than half of the owners of its 4.375% 2022s agreed to sell their notes.

Brazilian state oil giant Petrobras will buy back $4bn of bonds as part of a tender offer after nearly twice as many bondholders offered to sell their notes.

With Moody’s analysts predicting last week that Tesla would need a $2bn capital injection, high yield analysts have pointed to the company’s Gigafactory as a likely source of collateral, as the flagship facility was excluded from the firm’s covenant package in its last deal.