Coronavirus

Bondholders are expected to fight a formal restructuring proposal from the Argentine government that should arrive on Friday and proposes heavy haircuts, say market participants. Argentina’s government appears ready to play hard ball.

Citi has announced a host of country-specific relief measures for some of its Asia Pacific clients impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, including fee waivers for loan extensions and the option to restructure borrowings.

Bond markets handsomely rewarded Peru on Thursday for leading the way in Latin America on economic policy reaction to the Covid-19 crisis, notching its lowest ever dollar funding costs. As Peru’s public treasury director said the deal was to increase already substantial liquidity buffers, Lat Am bankers were left hoping the result would encourage more reluctant issuers.

The chief financial officer of Banco Santander México told GlobalCapital that the lender had decided to get ahead of a possible surge in demand for credit by issuing the largest ever bond by a Mexican bank on Tuesday.

English football’s highest level is at a clinch point as teams juggle a plunge in revenue, due to the suspension of the Premier League season, and the hefty overheads of player wages they must continue to pay. With clubs in need of cash, viable options are proving few and far between. Silas Brown, Sam Kerr and Mariam Meskin investigate.

The World Bank's treasury team has had a busy week, raising almost $15bn in three days, including the largest ever SSA dollar benchmark on Wednesday.

Italian government bonds sold off sharply this week as worries grew over the sovereign’s debt sustainability after last week’s Eurogroup meeting left any form of debt mutualisation a highly unlikely prospect in the near term. The result is that Italy will have to rely more on support from the European Central Bank as it prepares to bolt on a much bigger borrowing programme in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

US banks this week reported stellar returns from trading and underwriting in the first quarter, even as the bottom line was hit by gigantic writedowns and reserves for credit losses, as the economic and financial disruption from the coronavirus crisis took its toll.

Bank of Italy officials said this week that the country’s most fragile financial institutions might struggle to cope with the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, raising the prospect of consolidation within the banking sector.

Hellman & Friedman-owned alarm company Verisure announced a new European high yield bond on Thursday, the first after a drought of more than seven weeks. The deal is a conservative place to restart high yield primary markets, but bankers said there is appetite for more challenging issuers to come.

Agence France Trésor, the French sovereign debt office, has published a second draft budget bill for 2020, which will see it issue much more debt than previously announced.

World Bank made the most of the recovery in market conditions to print the largest ever SSA dollar benchmark on Wednesday, raising $8bn.