Americas

Alliance Data Systems, the unrated US private label credit card and marketing services provider, is set to end meetings with European investors on Thursday for €300m of unsecured notes, its first euro issue.

Santander has completed an overhaul of its London loans team, with four new hires that it hopes will lead the bank to the forefront of Europe’s corporate finance business. The Spanish bank wants a bigger role in high level acquisition finance in western Europe and is also investing in CIB divisions in Asia, eastern Europe and the US.

Argentina’s leading mortgage lender is looking to raise at least $200m in the international bond markets to finance a tender offer of outstanding debt due April 2016.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) is joining forces with Environmental Financial Products, the company that once pushed for US industrials to trade carbon credits, in a bid to go after a new niche derivatives market: small community and regional banks.

Chilean financial services firm, Tanner appeared to have done a disappearing act this week, seemingly cancelling its attempts to raise dollar debt having released price thoughts last Friday.

Most futures traders in the US believe that the Federal Reserve will raise rates next month, but derivatives markets show few aftershocks priced in.

Simon Property Group, the US property company that is the world’s largest real estate investment trust, launched a benchmark seven year euro bond this morning, its first issue in the currency for over two years.

Ethypharm, the French pharmaceuticals company, has allocated €287.5m of new loan facilities at a wider margin than it initially proposed.

Moody’s has cut the rating on Brazilian shopping centre owner General Shopping’s $315m unsecured bonds from B2 to Caa1, saying there is an “elevated” risk of default in the next year or two.

It was hardly back with a bang, but Latin American corporate issuance is on the agenda again after Fibra Terrafina sold $425m of seven year notes on Tuesday — some two months after its roadshow.

Halliburton jumped at the chance to wrap up its jumbo M&A financing, after the US Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen said that a rate rise in December was a ‘live possibility’.

This week’s landmark conviction in a Chicago court of a high frequency trader for ‘spoofing’ and commodities fraud has delivered a chilling statement of intent by US authorities to other suspects in the firing line and cranked up nervousness across the markets.