Coronavirus

The new pattern that investment grade companies will dare to issue bonds in the European market, even on days when stockmarkets are falling, was confirmed today when Anheuser-Busch InBev launched a three tranche bond that will be at least €4bn, while Volkswagen has brought the first car company bond since the crisis intensified, although it is from its financial services arm, which is backed by loans.

New Development Bank, the Shanghai-based multilateral development bank, is planning to sell a Rmb5bn ($704m) Panda bond that will be used to provide an emergency loan to China.

Taiwanese banks have triggered a market disruption clause on a recent loan signed by Indonesian company BFI Finance. The move, which allows lenders to increase the margins they earn on deals, is being considered for numerous other transactions too, GlobalCapital Asia understands.

Emerging markets face at least $2.5tr of financing needs and do not possess the resources to fund themselves, said the IMF on Friday. But with bond markets continuing to improve and multilateral development banks increasing their firepower, prospects for EM funding are at least looking more promising than a week ago.

Standard Chartered will commit at least $1bn of financing for companies that provide goods and services that can be used to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Investors flocked to African Development Bank’s Fight Covid-19 social bond on Thursday, allowing the supranational to print its own largest ever dollar deal, and its largest ever social bond.

The Inter-American Development Bank had the primary dollar public sector bond market to itself on Friday as it raised funding as part of its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Banks will have an extra year to comply with the latest set of bank capital rules, with the Basel Committee telling the industry on Friday to focus on responding to the coronavirus pandemic instead.

Despite a late rally in emerging market assets this week, which even included a three times oversubscribed issue from Panama, the risk of sovereign bond defaults is still hanging over the asset class.

The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing many of Europe's sovereigns to expand their borrowing programmes. This week's funding scorecard looks at the changes European sovereigns have made to respond to the crisis, and the progress they have made in their funding programmes as we approach the end of the first quarter.

US and European stocks rallied this week, recovering some of the losses suffered during the worst equity market sell-off since the 2008 financial crisis, but investors are not ready to pile back into the market yet, fearful of the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus in the United States.

The euphoria that infused Europe’s corporate bond market from Tuesday to Thursday has cooled somewhat, although investors are still open for business. Bankers had said on Thursday that Friday would bring an interesting crop of deals, but there is only one, for paper company Mondi, rated Baa1/BBB+.