Deutsche Bank

Several Chinese borrowers ventured into the bond market at the end of December, locking up last-minute deals that were mainly supported by anchor orders.

The Hang Seng Index’s appalling start to the new year has made ECM bankers and investors ultra-cautious about the market, and most participants are taking a wait-and-see approach. Christie Ou reports.

KfW and the European Investment Bank mandated banks on Wednesday for the first sterling SSA deals of the year. Public sector borrowers are looking to pile into the sterling market before the crunch vote by the UK Parliament on Theresa May’s Brexit deal in mid-January, with deals expected in both Sonia-linked and fixed rate formats.

Considerably cheap valuations have made Weimob, a Tencent Holdings-backed company that is on the road with its Hong Kong IPO, an attractive proposition for equity investors, according to a source close to the listing.

The global high yield bond market has produced $320bn of new issues in 2018, up to December 21, 43% down on last year’s total of $563bn, according to Dealogic. Sentiment has turned progressively more bearish as the year has worn on, with concerns about US-China trade hostility and overvaluation of US equities biting.

Deutsche Bank said it has been granted exemption from a financial penalty by the European Commission after the bank was accused — along with three others — for breaching antitrust rules in the trading of SSA bonds.

The European Commission said on Thursday that it had informed four banks that have, in its view, breached European Union antitrust rules in trading SSA bonds in the secondary market that it is investigating them.

The UK’s CityFibre has signed a £1.12bn debt package from seven banks, as the Goldman Sachs-linked fibre broadband infrastructure provider rolls out its nationwide competition against incumbent firms BT and Virgin Media.

Chinese property companies are pushing their fund-raising for 2018 to the bitter end – with sometimes surprising results. Cifi Holdings scored with a larger-than-expected $400m bond on Monday, while Redsun Properties Group sold a $200m tap.

Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) gave investors a year-end treat this week with 2018’s last billion-dollar IPO from an Asian issuer. It was paid back with a near 8% jump in its stock price on the first day of trading. But to succeed the firm had to cut its fundraising target and get realistic on pricing. Jonathan Breen reports.

Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) has nabbed $1.1bn from its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, guiding investors toward the bottom of the price range amid choppy markets.

Logan Property Holdings Co made a quick venture into the market on Thursday to use the remainder of its offshore issuance quota for the year. The typically price-sensitive issuer willingly left something on the table for investors this time around to ensure their support in 2019.