Barclays

Fannie Mae on Thursday ensured its name would be included in future financial textbooks on the replacement of Libor as it priced the first ever floating rate notes linked to the new Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR), drawing a wide range of investors from money funds to state treasuries in the process.

Barclays has hired a former Deutsche Bank senior FX boss as its new global head of G10 foreign exchange trading and distribution.

Reliance Industries has made a quick return to the offshore loan market with a $2.7bn refinancing deal, having picked 17 banks to act as mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners.

Public sector borrowers could break the traditional summer silence over the next couple of weeks if they react quickly to sterling interest, said one of the leads on this week’s comeback in the currency by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

The International Finance Corporation on Tuesday brought the tightest priced five year dollar benchmark in three years, at a level that bankers said looked in line with the supranational’s curve. Despite the measly spread over swaps, higher outright yields likely helped buoy demand.

Connect Plus (M25), the project company that manages the M25 motorway around London, has priced its first public bond issue, for £893m, to unwind interest rate swaps from 2009 and refinance part of a £1bn loan.

The International Finance Corporation is set to bring its first five year dollar global benchmark in two years, and could achieve an even tighter spread than Nordic Investment Bank’s multi-year low two weeks ago, according to on-looking bankers weighing fair value.

At the end of a dead week for equity block trading in Europe, Barclays hit the market on Thursday night with a £78m sale of stock in Hays, the UK recruitment consultancy, on behalf of Equiom Turst, a Guernsey registered trust and a trustee of the Chainpoint Unit Trust.

Concerns from some fund managers about the terms of Altice’s new €2.5bn-equivalent bond were swamped by orders from other investors eager to bag single-B paper with a big coupon from a core high yield issuer. After a series of successful investor push-backs on deal terms, the debt laden French telecom proved this week that borrowers still can walk away with loose covenants, writes Victor Jimenez.

Barclays said it had hired former Deutsche banker Darren Campili as vice-chairman in healthcare banking, part of the UK bank's push to expand its European banking operations.

There is a sense that banks in the Middle East are being encouraged to pledge allegiance in the public bond markets to either Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates or to Qatar, as the diplomatic tensions between the two sides rumble on. But in the MTN market it is becoming clear that no such division exists.

India’s Housing Development Finance Corp, which is expected to wrap up senior syndication of a $750m loan soon, is gearing up for the next phase of the syndication process.