Barclays

The slightly softer tone in the Asian markets on Tuesday did not deter issuers from flocking to the debt market, with as many as eight borrowers bagging new bonds. And the momentum continued on Wednesday, with a handful of firms opening their transactions.

The Bank of England has been dragged back into the mire of Libor-rigging investigations, after the BBC found tapes of Barclays traders referring to "pressure from the UK government and Bank of England" to keep their submissions low. The witch-hunt is already well under way but, if the Bank exerted pressure, it was the right thing to do.

Wobbles in eurozone government bond secondaries this week failed to deter a strong showing from a pair of public sector issuers in primary on Tuesday. Unédic found strong demand and tightened from guidance on its longest dated benchmark ever, while Austria broke a series of records with a 10 year euro benchmark.

Stellar funding conditions in emerging markets enabled Romania to print 10 and 18 year debt at record low yields on Monday.

The pace of borrowing has slackened for public sector borrowers as Easter approaches but a few are still out hunting for second quarter funding.

Bank of China launched its multi-currency, multi-tranche transaction on Tuesday morning, as Citic Securities also opened books for two tranches of dollar notes.

Oil India is returning to dollar bonds, launching a new 10 year offering on Tuesday morning, with the aim of paying off debt related to its 2016 Russian oilfield acquisitions.

Unédic and Austria have announced that they will sell euro benchmarks at the long end of the curve on Tuesday.

Barclays said on Monday that its chief executive Jes Staley was under investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), for his attempt to identify the author of a whistleblowing letter. The whistleblower raised questions about a senior employee recruited in the first half of 2016, who had worked with Staley at a previous employer.

Bain Capital and Cinven have agreed to buy Stada, the German generic pharmaceuticals firm, for €4.1bn, in the biggest private equity acquisition of a European company for four years.

Romania was offering a 20bp new issue premium for both a new 10 year euro bond and a re-opening of its existing 2035s on Monday morning, according to a lead banker.

Eight lenders will arrange a $750m five year borrowing for an entity in the Vedanta Group, in a deal that has been in discussion since January.