Banks

Chinese hotel company Huazhu Group has returned to the equity-linked market, raising $450m from a bond convertible into its American Depository Shares (ADS).

Genius Auto Finance, a joint venture between Geely Automobile and BNP Paribas Personal Finance, is planning to kick off a Rmb4bn ($565m) auto loan ABS deal on Thursday.

Chinese company Kingsoft Cloud Holdings has raised $510m after boosting the size of its Nasdaq float.

Chinese technology company Lenovo Group took advantage of improving sentiment and small new issue premiums on recent deals to reopen a dollar bond sold in April. It raised $350m from the tap on Thursday, but investor interest was quite muted.

China YuHua Education Corp’s controlling shareholder raised HK$1.58bn ($203.8m) from a block sale of the company's shares on Thursday evening. The firm's stock slumped nearly 10% after the transaction.

UBS has hired from China’s top banking and insurance regulator for a newly created job called China integration lead.

Citi has raised HK$2.3bn ($300m) from a cash-settled exchangeable bond that uses Chinese property company Longfor Group Holdings as the reference stock, offering the market a rare structure for the first EB in the region this year.

HSBC Canada issued the most oversubscribed dollar-denominated Canadian covered bond in years on Thursday, and still managed to price 28bp tighter than the Canadian heavyweights.

Despite a crash in dollar swap spreads as the US Treasury announced a record borrowing binge this week, SSA bankers remain bullish on supply, with KfW rumoured to be plotting a return to dollars after leaning heavily on euros for its benchmark funding this year.

The merger of the UK’s largest mobile phone operator, O2, with cable company Virgin Media, agreed on Thursday, will generate a £6bn financing need which the parties want to complete before the deal closes, expected to be in 2021 — and later on, it could lead to an IPO, say sources close to the deal.

The Norges Bank surprised the market with an unexpected base rate cut to a record low of zero on Thursday. Since the start of the year, coronavirus volatility and wildly gyrating oil prices have buffeted the value of the kroner.

The Kingdom of Bahrain moved emerging markets’ bond recovery beyond top tier issuers on Thursday as it printed a $2bn dual tranche dollar trade that raked in $11bn of demand.