Bank of America

Chile has tightened price guidance on the first bond from Latin America this year, a 10 year euro-denominated deal, to 115bp area over mid-swaps.

Ping An Life Insurance Company of China started building books for its inaugural dollar bond on Tuesday, while South Korea’s Woori Bank and China Energy Reserve and Chemicals Group are also wooing investors for their respective dollar deals.

General Mills, the US food company, on Monday became the second issuer of the year in the European corporate bond market, printing a €500m floating rate note.

Intesa Sanpaolo is set to print the first additional tier one transaction of 2016 after opening the dollar tier two market for European banks last week, while ABN Amro opened the euro bank capital market on Monday.

India’s IDBI Bank has named a group of seven banks to manage a qualified institutional placement, according to a source involved in the transaction.

South Korea's KEB Hana Bank is set to meet investors next week ahead of its first foray into the dollar bond market since its merger.

As news of the UK and US investigation into SSA market trading practices broke, the SSA market split over whether the banks at the heart of the probe would lose primary business.

In the wake of the news that four traders at different banks were under investigation by US and UK authorities over possible sharing of client flow information, senior bankers were quick to blame the structures of the market, and pressure from issuers focused on turnover statistics, for making it possible.

Supranational and agency borrowers have long anticipated a wave of demand from American investors as US government sponsored enterprise issuance dwindles. But this week there were concrete signs that the dollar bond market has shaken off the problems that prevented the big switch. Craig McGlashan reports.

Just as European equity capital sales made a prompt start to the year on Tuesday, the first viable window available, with the €1bn NN Group block trade, the equity-linked market also wasted no time. Safran, the French aerospace and defence company, issued a €650m convertible at what a banker claimed was a record low yield.

The start to 2016’s equity capital markets business in Europe has been tricky, but the action on Tuesday showed that high quality deals can get done very well, provided they come in a suitable window.

Investigators are finally baring their teeth at the bond markets, after dozens of other post-crisis scandals, with a probe into the supranational and agency market that has engulfed four banks.