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Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena led a trio of speculative grade Italian banks into the euro bond market this week, as credit investors showed that no issuers were off limit in their increasingly desperate search for yield. Tyler Davies reports.

Jean Pierre Mustier's departure from UniCredit may help Italy in an attempt — shared by governments and supervisors around Europe — to push the banking sector to help solve economic policy problems during the pandemic.

Smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp pocketed $3.96bn this week from a record top-up placement and concurrent convertible bond issue. Investors flocked to the transaction for its rarity value, investment grade rating and the offer of a liquid and volatile stock. Jonathan Breen reports.

There is every reason to be sceptical of the UK’s plan for a national infrastructure bank. Infrastructure is hard to finance because governments are unreliable. Combining hard assets expected to pay back over 30 years with democratic governments that change course every few makes private investors reluctant to treat long-term infra projects as a pure matter of credit risk.

The coronavirus pandemic means many parts of the US are experiencing an unusual festive period. But emerging markets sovereigns broke another Thanksgiving tradition by flooding primary bond markets with new deals on what is usually a quiet week for new issues — even as levels of stress are rising sharply at the riskier end of the asset class. Oliver West and Mariam Meskin report.

China Evergrande Group got some relief from recent selling pressure this week, after convincing a large group of equity holders not to exercise a put option. It also signed up two new state-backed investors.

By all measures, the first two transactions of the European Union’s arrival as a supersized issuer in the capital markets were tremendous successes. The order books were world beaters, the new issue premiums were tiny despite the huge deal sizes, and the secondary performance has been incredible. But while it has been plain sailing so far, there are bigger tests ahead.

If a company’s bonds were yielding more than 40% last December, what would have been the chances it would be in a position to raise market funding this week? That’s exactly what UK poultry producer Boparan has achieved in an extraordinary reversal of fortunes against the backdrop of a global pandemic.

It felt like a great weight had been lifted from financial markets this week. Two weights in fact.

Just because it seems unlikely that in the US election the Democrats will take both the White House and the Senate, it does not mean that capital markets should become despondent about a fiscal stimulus package that could have reached $2.3tr had the so-called "blue wave" made a clean sweep.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange stunned the market on Tuesday by halting Ant Group’s $34bn IPO, set to be the largest listing in history, just two days before the company’s planned stock market debut. The extraordinary move is expected to delay the listing by at least six months. It will also force investors to revalue the company, write Jonathan Breen and Addison Gong.

German dairy group Müller has sold €250m of US private placements across five, seven and 10 years maturities.