Citi

The Republic of Albania will go on the road to promote a euro benchmark transaction for the first time in three years.

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) has selected banks for its first trip to the bond market for five years, angling to refinance a bond maturing next week.

UK telecoms provider BT Group avoided competing with six new issues on Thursday and found itself with no competing supply for its latest corporate bond deal on Friday. While BT’s ambitions for the size of its deal this time were more modest than previous trades, the demand was still strong, allowing it to print tight to secondary levels.

In a setback for South Korea’s insurance companies, Hanwha General Insurance was forced to pull its tier two dollar bond from the market on Thursday.

Two Samsung-linked units raised W927bn ($829m) from a sell-down in Samsung C&T Corp on Thursday, capping a flurry of overnight block trades from South Korea this week.

Nestle, Électrcité de France and BP have led a stampede to the dollar market ahead of an expected rate hike by the Federal Reserve next week, as credit markets shrugged off trade wars between the US and China.

Japanese issuers are rarely seen in the European corporate bond markets, but electric motor manufacturer Nidec made it two Japanese corporate bond sales in two days, following Japan Tobacco’s multi-tranche deal on Wednesday.

Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA

Guarantor: CPP Investment Board

Guarantor: Kingdom of Belgium (51.41%), Republic of France (45.59%) and Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (3.00%)

Cryptocurrencies have not had a great year. Total market capitalisation of the sector is down 75% from the highs of January, falling roughly in line with what the bears predicted. But that hasn’t seemed to slow institutions’ attempts to get involved.

Japan Tobacco took the rare step of issuing corporate bonds in three different currencies on the same day when it sold its debut euro and sterling bond deals alongside a pair of dollar tranches this week. The unusual move proved to be a successful one however, with each tranche at least three times subscribed.