Americas

South Africa's Steinhoff is lining up $3.8bn in loans to buy bedding retailer Mattress Firm. The acquisition will give the retailer a foothold in the US consumer market.

Mexican government owned lender Bancomext’s latest bond traded up on the break on Friday as Latin American new issue markets continue to benefit from huge inflows into EM bond funds.

Tullett Prebon has bought a long term licence to use CME Group's hybrid voice/electronic trading technology, adding to the interdealer broker's other recent hybrid expansion initiatives.

UBS reopened the additional tier one market for the first time since Brexit this week, taking advantage of highly supportive conditions in the dollar market. With the asset class ever more supported by regulators, further issuance could be imminent.

A welcome trio of non-Argentine corporate issuers provided variety to the Latin American new issue market this week, with all three achieving the rare distinction of being praised by DCM bankers both for their timing and for not pushing investors too hard on pricing.

The Central American Bank for Economic Integration could return to benchmark issuance in 2017, after this week selling $72m-equivalent of green paper to Japanese retail investors in its first ever SRI transaction.

EM bond investors said they expected a strong local bid to push new bonds from Chilean government-owned oil company Empresa Nacional de Petróleo (Enap) tighter after the company raised $700m of 10 year senior unsecured bonds on Tuesday.

Microsoft kicked off a front-loaded week of corporate issuance in the dollar market weighted as borrowers emerged from earnings blackout and rushed to print ahead of non-farm payrolls on Friday.

France's Danone has completed syndication of $13.1bn of loans to fund the $12.5bn acquisition of North American organic food and drinks company White Wave. But there might not be many more jumbo deals this year, as political volatility looks set to hang over the M&A market for a little longer, writes Robert Cooke.

Barclays, Santander UK and UBS blitzed the US market on Wednesday in a series of trades aimed at boosting levels of total loss absorbing capacity (TLAC) eligible debt.

US federal agencies have agreed a final rule exempting some commercial and financial derivatives counterparties from having to pay margin on trades not cleared through a clearing house.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association and IHS Markit have updated their ISDA Amend protocol for margin on uncleared swaps and cross-jurisdictional notification between counterparties, in response to changing regulatory requirements.