BNP Paribas

Emirates NBD came to market for its first additional tier one bond on Wednesday morning, printing what what data suggests is the Middle East’s largest ever deal in the format.

A week after BMW debuted in the Panda market with a Rmb3bn ($447m) three year private placement, its onshore financing arm, BMW Automotive Finance, returned to more familiar territory with a Rmb5.5bn auto loan ABS.

World Bank launched a $4.5bn five year trade on Tuesday in its first dollar benchmark of 2019, confounding some bankers who had expected this week to be populated with smaller transactions.

Public sector borrowers in the euro SSA market received strong demand in both the short and long ends of the curve on Tuesday. KfW took advantage of the blistering conditions to sell its first euro benchmark with a three year maturity since 2015, while Société du Grand Paris (SGP) sold its biggest ever bond.

Cemex is back in the bond market after a year and a half’s absence, opening books on a senior secured bond in euros.

Pepsico took one of its rare sips at the euro bond market on Monday, and was rewarded with two bonds, seen as priced flat to and through its curve. After the European corporate bond market was clouded by weak secondary trading last week, it was back on form on Monday.

Société du Grand Paris (SGP) mandated banks on Monday for its second benchmark green bond, following its debut last October. Meanwhile, KfW hit screens for a long three year benchmark, the agency’s third benchmark in euros this year.

Telefónica, the Spanish telecoms group with €55bn of debt, came to the euro market on Tuesday to refinance two of its hybrid capital bonds. It launched a tender offer for the pair, which now total €1.3bn, and a hybrid new issue to replace them, tacking on opportunistically a 10 year senior bond issue.

Achmea, the Dutch insurance holding company, has signed a €1bn sustainability-linked refinancing loan, in what one bank said was the first deal of its kind in the country's insurance sector.

Whether Vodafone’s £3.44bn issue of two and three year mandatorily convertible bonds on Tuesday this week ends up being judged a corporate finance success for the company may take time to discover. But it is already clear it was a great hit with investors — much more so than the first time Vodafone issued the structure in 2016.

Vodafone’s £3.4bn mandatorily convertible bond with share buyback language, sold to huge demand this week, may have created a new financial product. Certainly it will set off a maelstrom of analysis and pitching to clients, as banks seek other companies willing to try this daring structure. Jon Hay and Aidan Gregory report.

Markets have rallied in Europe and the US so far this year across equities and credit, but participants are feeling gloomy about the prospects for investment banks' revenues in the forthcoming first quarter results.