Bank of America

Dollars burst into life on Monday with Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) and FMO opening books, as bankers away from the deals point to the ‘EIB effect’ in making the market too hot to resist.

There has been no covered message sent on the IPO of Finablr, the financial holding company which owns Travelex, though the deal is set to close today, Monday May 13. The banks are still working hard to close the book on schedule.

Gran Tierra Energy, the Canada-listed oil and gas company that mostly operates in Colombia, held investor meetings and calls on Friday as it plots its second-ever international bond deal.

European corporate bond investors showed they were hungry for paper on Thursday, despite the gloom infecting equity markets this week about the prospect of a restart to the China-US trade war. A flurry of issuers came to the market, hot from roadshows, and got plenty of over-subscription while slashing their spreads by 20bp to 30bp.

Gold Fields, a South Africa-headquartered mining company, sold its $1bn dual tranche bond on Wednesday at a spread that looked historically tight to comparable issuer, AngloGold. It attracted $3bn of orders despite national elections on the same day.

Casino operator MGM China Holdings priced a larger-than-expected $1.5bn 144A/Reg S deal this week, and both tranches rallied in the secondary market despite a broader risk-off sentiment.

Eagle Hospitality Trust extended bookbuilding for its Singapore IPO twice because of market jitters following US president Donald Trump’s tweet this week about Chinese trade tariffs, according to a source close to the deal.

The strength of corporate bond demand, after falls in stockmarkets engendered by the US's hardened stance on trade talks with China, will be tested in the US on Wednesday by a $20bn issue for IBM. In Europe, the test could come on Thursday, since a handful of issuers finished roadshows on Wednesday.

Occidental Petroleum has successfully wooed Anadarko, the Texas-based shale oil and gas company, with a new offer to buy it, including a larger portion of cash. Anadarko has ditched the deal it already had in place to sell itself to rival bidder Chevron.

Equity capital markets bankers are pitching aggressively for any new business they can get, often disregarding issuer region or the size of the deal, to make up for the dearth of supply so far in 2019.

Eagle Hospitality Trust has cut the floor of the initial price guidance for its Singapore IPO, hiking up the yield for investors while delaying the end of its roadshow, according to a source close to the deal.

US bond bankers are looking forward to a bumper May, with a slew of big ticket M&A financings set to hit the dollar market within days. Bristol-Myers Squibb announced a roadshow on Thursday for a deal that is expected to be around $21bn, to help fund its acquisition of Celgene.