Citi

Enel, Italy's leading power company, announced on Wednesday that it would issue a benchmark 10 year bond in an exchange offer for up to €5.5bn of existing bonds, as part of a liability management exercise. The transaction is meant to extend Enel's maturity profile.

Shire has raised over $3bn in loans in the last month for its $5.2bn takeover of NPS Pharma. The bio-pharmaceutical company is paying a high premium for NPS’s assets, but Shire may also be loading up on debt to deter takeover bids from rivals, said bankers.

Tunisia has picked banks for a 144A/Reg S conventional dollar deal and starts investor meetings on Friday. The lead manager line-up contains some of the same banks that were attached to a debut sukuk the sovereign had intended to launch in 2014. But that transaction — although still planned — has been delayed while Tunisia tweaks its sukuk legislation, said debt bankers.

Akbank TAS is out in the market with a new dollar bond, a week after the Turkish sovereign made its 2015 debut. The bank is making an opportunistic move to take advantage of tight spreads caused by a flight to less volatile credits across CEEMEA.

The Republic of Indonesia started 2015 in style on January 8 with a $4bn dual trancher that was five times subscribed. The overwhelming demand meant the sovereign was able to shave 150bp off its funding costs.

China Huarong Asset Management and China Railway Signal & Communication Corp (CRSC) are lining up to take the Hong Kong market by storm this year, with both companies looking to bring multi-billion dollar IPOs soon.

Export Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) staged a successful return to the international debt market on January 12, selling a SEC registered dual tranche deal that drew over $6bn of demand. Amid high levels of volatility since the start of the new year, bankers chose a good window for the Korean issuer, which achieved its goals for size and pricing.

Duration is for the second time this week the choice for a periphery eurozone sovereign, after Italy mandated banks for a 30 year benchmark on Wednesday. But there was more woe for Greece at the very short end, as yields on its 13 week bills rose by 25bp at auction.

Belarus's request for proposals this week for a $1bn bond issue has once again highlighted the ethical dilemmas investment banks face when working in and for countries with tarnished human rights records.

US real estate investment trust WP Carey issued a €500m eight year bond on Wednesday, continuing the 2014 trend of non-European companies selling bonds in the currency.

State-owned coal supplier China Shenhua Energy successfully issued its maiden offshore bond market on January 13, fetching $1.5bn across three tranches. The size of the offering was relatively large for a debut issuer although weak commodities prices meant the company had to fork out a new issue concession.

China Huarong Asset Management, which signed up eight pre-IPO investors in August last year for a stake worth around $2.4bn, is slowly moving forward with its Hong Kong listing plans. The IPO, expected to raise at least $2bn but which could go up to as much as $3bn, is set to receive a lot of attention from investors as peer China Cinda Asset Management has performed well since its own listing.