Deutsche Bank

It is a mark of how far the market has come from a barren week at the end of May that not just one, but three deals, totalling €2.75bn, were priced on Friday. The European Central Bank meeting and the expectation of a deal from German pharmaceuticals company Bayer played their part in the issuers’ decisions on timing and the order books justified those choices.

Guarantor: Federal Republic of Germany

The week began with that rarest of things in recent times, a welcoming political backdrop. It was marred, however, by monetary policy meetings from the two most important central banks in the world. While the US Federal Reserve’s second rate hike of the year was a foregone conclusion, it caused the dollar curve to flatten still further, making the euro market even more fertile funding territory than it has been for SSAs. But even so, euros had its own struggles this week, facing what one head of SSA syndicate called “one of the most important and unpredictable European Central Bank meetings for a long time”. Lewis McLellan reports.

Two issuers from the CEEMEA region — Bulgarian Energy Holding and Ecobank Transnational Inc — have mandated banks for new bonds and are embarking on roadshows, breaking the wait-and-see mode that the market had slipped into over the last week.

The Paris IPO of Delachaux Group, the French maker of railway equipment, has been called off after CVC agreed to sell its stake in the company to Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) for an undisclosed price.

Ecobank Transnational Incorporated, a pan-African banking group, is the only CEEMEA issuer to have publicly progressed with bond plans this week, setting the roadshow for its debut dollar bond. A syndicate official on the deal said that lead managers are confident of demand, but a rival questioned whether a single-B rated sub-Saharan issuer could reopen the market.

Asia’s bond market suffered prolonged bouts of volatility in the first half of the year. Bankers, credit analysts and asset managers are trying to shake off the disappointments in both the primary and secondary markets, but the signs are not good. Addison Gong reports.

China Aoyuan Property Group raised a larger than planned $225m from a tap of its existing note on Monday, but had to pay up for the transaction. A Chinese local government financing vehicle (LGFV), on the other hand, fell short of its size expectation.

SSA borrowers are streaming into the euro market, flooding the early part of the week with deals in an effort to secure funding before a slew of central bank meetings towards the end of the week.

Medical diagnostics firm Unilabs launched a benchmark size extension of its loan debt on Monday, as a range of investors clamour for paper despite issuance volumes running ahead of last year’s record pace.

Unrealistic pricing expectations are keeping two EM corporate issuers by the wayside after volatile markets forced Atrium to cancel a tender offer combined with a new issue last week.

Deutsche Bank is losing its head of Asia equity-linked business, with Keyvan Zolfaghari set to leave the firm for Goldman Sachs.