Americas

Mexican non-bank lender Unifin made its second bond market outing of the year on Thursday with a senior unsecured deal that came at the wide end of initial price thoughts.

Bankers said that the Dominican Republic’s Dominican peso bond sale was the highlight of a busy but choppy day in Latin American primary debt markets, though market volatility cost the sovereign heavily in dollars.

The SSA market showed its “resilience” to the horror show in US equities early in the week as a series of borrowers printed strong dollar trades — one with its largest ever book, another with its largest size in years and not one paying up for the privilege. Some bankers suggested they may have benefited from a flight to safety but the general sense was that if the volatility comes back, public sector borrowers need not worry.

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The US high grade bond market remained open for business through the market sell-off this week, underlining its resilience.

The viability of short volatility strategies in derivatives markets was dealt a severe blow this week, after a historic spike in equity volatility torpedoed popular exchange traded notes. Costas Mourselas reports.

Deutsche Bank plans to put up to 40 bankers at director level and above in its EMEA investment banking division at risk of redundancy, including the bank's co-head of FIG DCM, GlobalCapital understands. Several of those put at risk were based in Birmingham, including the bank’s head of Europe-US private placements.

American issuers old and new enjoyed the benefits of the euro investment grade corporate bond market in 2017. In comparison, 2018 has been very quiet so far, but some bankers do not expect that situation to remain for much longer.

Bond market participants said on Wednesday said that Latin American issuers could return in force on Thursday after another day of calm in markets.

The plunge in global stock prices has only caused the European investment grade corporate bond market to close for one day. On Wednesday, two pharmaceutical companies from different ends of the the ratings spectrum brought multi-tranche deals which attracted more than €9.5bn of combined demand.

JinkoSolar Holding Co set out plans to raise $100m on Wednesday, after opening the order book for a follow-on offering of American Depository Shares alongside a private placement of the shares, according to a deal term sheet.

Secondary markets for Latin American bonds have held up well in the context of a storm of hefty sell-offs across global equity markets, but volatility is likely to make new issuance tougher as a raft of high yield borrowers line up deals.