Coronavirus

Investors stepped up on Monday night to support UK retailer WH Smith in its struggle with Covid-19 disruption in a £165.9m equity raise. Assura, the UK REIT focused on GP surgeries and NHS properties, also raised £185m of investment capital on Monday night.

UniCredit has said that it will redeem €2.5bn of tier two capital next month, with regulators allowing banks to manage their debt capital stacks freely during the coronavirus crisis.

The high grade corporate bond market is bursting with deals on Tuesday, with recent record flows prompting some to expect issuers to move down the capital structure and into hybrid deals from next week.

The State of Qatar on Tuesday issued a $10bn three tranche bond, with a final demand book in excess of $44bn. The deal came in the wake of extreme oil price volatility, though Qatar has buffers to protect it against any major economic shocks.

The Republic of Indonesia turned to the bond market on Monday to fund its Covid-19 relief efforts, raising $4.3bn from a triple-tranche deal. Investor demand for long-dated tenors encouraged the country to offer a 50 year note as part of the trade, making it a first for Asian sovereigns.

Rating agencies have continued their policy of taking swift action on Latin American governments as Standard & Poor’s removed its positive outlook from Brazil, the region’s largest economy, citing political opposition to President Jair Bolsonaro as a key reason.

For now, at least, Argentina appears to be asking its domestic bondholders to take the brunt of the government’s efforts to ease cashflow worries amid the Covid-19 crisis, providing upward momentum to foreign law debt prices.

More than 100 charities and other organisations are urging that developing countries' debt payments be cancelled this year. They have called for interest and principal payments to be withheld from public and private sector lenders.

Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical company, followed the example of Danaher by reopening bonds that priced in the last few weeks. It raised another €500m on Monday, pricing well inside where it priced the original bonds at the end of March.

Eurozone sovereigns extend their syndication spree this week with Cyprus and Ireland mandating banks for new deals on Monday. Both sovereigns are preparing bigger funding programmes in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Equity bankers have suggested that some shareholders might be tempted to come to market to sell secondary shares in accelerated trades, reopening a market largely shut because of pandemic-related volatility.

Shares in UK newsagent chain WH Smith rose more than 4% on Monday morning after it confirmed it was preparing a capital increase to repair its balance sheet after the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus led to a large drop in the number of shoppers at its lucrative airport stores.