Deutsche Bank

There was a time, not so very long ago, that Barclays and Deutsche Bank seemed to be plunging down the same path together. Fixed income flow monsters both, the two firms unveiled superficially similar revamps in 2014 and 2015, driven by the same structural imperatives. In the last year though, the pair couldn’t have been more different.

The World Bank has chosen leads to run a euro benchmark that will be the first from the borrower in nearly two years.

Daimler raised €3bn on Tuesday with a blockbuster bond offering of three tranches, each of which was heavily oversubscribed. The deal comes in an empty new issue market and is unusually large for this time of year.

Beijing Capital Grand closed a successful $400m floating rate bond on Thursday, after waiting weeks for a market window. But the transaction fell flat in the secondary market after a bookrunner’s withdrawal from the trade spooked investors.

The package of business cuts unveiled by new chief executive Christian Sewing earlier this year has already started to bite on Deutsche’s balance sheet, with trading assets plunging and borrowing in repo down 95%. Despite the cuts, though, the bank beat rock bottom expectations this quarter, but still faces a challenge to return to sustainable profit-making, according to analysts.

Pinduoduo, one of China’s hottest technology start-ups, sealed its $1.6bn IPO at the top end as expected, but not all American Depository Share (ADS) listings were so lucky this week as investors remained on edge.

Pintec Technology Holdings is gauging investor appetite for its IPO on the Nasdaq ahead of roadshows that are expected to start next Wednesday.

Concerns from some fund managers about the terms of Altice’s new €2.5bn-equivalent bond were swamped by orders from other investors eager to bag single-B paper with a big coupon from a core high yield issuer. After a series of successful investor push-backs on deal terms, the debt laden French telecom proved this week that borrowers still can walk away with loose covenants, writes Victor Jimenez.

Deutsche Bank has seen the biggest fall among large investment banks of in employee approval of its CEO, according to analysis from UBS’s banks research team. The news comes as the German bank’s new boss, Christian Sewing, rolls out extensive cuts to international trading operations and a refocusing of efforts on Germany.

Bankers marketing the latest crop of IPOs from China’s technology sector got their game face on this week amid escalating fears of a trade war with the US.

There is a sense that banks in the Middle East are being encouraged to pledge allegiance in the public bond markets to either Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates or to Qatar, as the diplomatic tensions between the two sides rumble on. But in the MTN market it is becoming clear that no such division exists.

German banks could be slow to get going with issuing preferred senior debt despite the fact that they are regaining access to the tool from next week. Issuers will have to get to a hold on how pricing for the new notes will compare with other asset classes.