Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)

Loans bankers are keeping their cool over Turkey’s sharply deteriorating lending conditions, though borrowers in the country with a majority lira revenue and hard currency exposure have been warned that tough times are head.

Turkish discount grocer Şok Marketler got its IPO over the finish line at the top of its revised price range.

Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, the State Development Bank of the Republic of Poland, is marketing a dual tranche euro bond.

The global pressure on emerging markets, triggered by a multitude of factors but most obviously a rapidly strengthening dollar, has been felt across the asset class. The most notable casualty in equities has been Turkey, which at the beginning of 2018 was expected to produce a bumper crop of IPOs this year.

The last two weeks have been the toughest in recent memory for emerging market bond investors who have seen their assets in local currencies and dollars alike take a hammering amid the collapse in the Argentine peso and Turkish lira.

JP Morgan's launch of an environmentally and socially conscious version of its EMBI index is well timed, as fund managers realise that dodgy morals can lead to shabby financial statements.

Avast, the Czech cybersecurity firm, closed a well-covered book for its IPO on Wednesday at what bookrunners said was an attractive price, but the stock traded down on its first day.

Lenders to Vakifbank’s Turkish Islamic finance subsidiary got a 90bp reward for financing the smaller specialist financial institution over its parent company, according to bankers close to the transaction.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran has sent Turkey’s bonds, already under pressure from a weakening currency, flying wider.

The strengthening dollar is wreaking havoc for emerging market bond investors as assets in local currencies and dollars alike take a hammering.

The IPOs of two Turkish retailers, Beymen and DeFacto, were cancelled at the end of last week, after failing to attract enough demand to cover the shares on offer. A third IPO, Şok Marketler, was extended to Wednesday May 9. All three were seeking to list in Istanbul.

Euroclear’s refusal to continue settling Rusal trades when US sanctions were slapped on the company on April 6 may have saved many US bond investors from crystallising crippling losses. If the US plans further rounds of similar punishments, it should turn that happy accident into a permanent feature of the sanctions process.