CEE Bonds

The Republic of Turkey nipped into the market on Monday afternoon to raise $2bn with an SEC registered bond, just days before presidential and parliamentary elections were called. While one EM investor called the issuing strategy unusual, a rival banker said it was a classic case of Turkish opportunism, adding that the higher yield paid is the reality of the market now.

Some EM fund managers and fixed income analysts are already in discussions over whether investors stuck holding Rusal bonds may be able, with the issuer’s help, to create a workaround that would allow the company to stay current on its debt obligations.

With little clarity on the full scope of the new round of sanctions on Russia from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC), service providers have been quick to cut ties with the seven sanctioned oligarchs and their related entities for risk of violating new rules on facilitating business with designated individuals or entities.

The decision by the US Treasury last week to designate a number of Russian oligarchs and companies as sanctioned entities, in an effort to curb the country’s “worldwide malign activity”, has transformed investor sentiment and led to buyers fleeing Russia across debt and equities, write Sam Kerr and Francesca Young.

DCM bankers have seen an evaporation of their Russian bond business this week reminiscent of 2014 when US and EU financial sanctions were first put in place against the country. Fears of further sanctions have meant that the whole Russian bond market is under scrutiny, and pressure.

Risky assets are often beholden to perceptions of geopolitical risk, though in recent times that has been a minor factor in price movements. Perhaps this dynamic is about to change.

Rusal bondholders are in a pickle. They have been told by the US Treasury that they have 60 days to dump the sanctioned Russian company’s bonds, but trading has halted, leaving them stuck with the debt. Investors are lost as to how to value the bonds in their portfolios and are scrambling to work out how they can legally continue to hold and mark them.

Montenegro followed Egypt to the euro bond market this week, offering investors another chance to take on single-B risk in the currency.

Panic selling has hit the Russia bond complex with investors dumping securities as they race to reduce their exposure to the country for fear of further sanctions.

The sell-off in Russian bonds is battering emerging markets investors, who are seeing the biggest spread widening since sanctions were first imposed on the country in 2014. Not only have the bonds of freshly sanctioned Rusal tanked but other Russian companies are selling off as investors fear they may be next, and the rot is starting to spread to the wider central and eastern Europe region as well.

The Eurasian Development Bank has embarked on a roadshow for a three to five year tenge denominated Eurobond.

Equity investor sentiment on Russia has been upended in the space of a weekend after the shock release from the US Treasury on Friday imposing a fresh set of sanctions on Russia which has torpedoed the fortunes of aluminium producer EN+ and its owner Oleg Deripaska.