Deutsche Bank

Euro corporate bond issuance returned on Friday after a blank day due to Thursday’s European Central Bank meeting. As the ECB’s president, Mario Draghi, said nothing to unsettle markets, US machinery maker John Deere and Italian oil and gas company Eni both priced deals in euros before the weekend, while Sweden's Akelius Property did the same in sterling.

SoftBank, the Japanese telecoms and technology group, received the highest speculative grade ratings for its potential new bond deal on Friday. It will aim at repeating its notable success in the European high yield market in 2015

ICICI Lombard General Insurance, India’s largest private sector non-life insurer, is set to launch its IPO on September 15, and is eyeing up to Rp57bn ($892.8m).

General syndication for Indian data analytics firm Mu Sigma’s debut loan is in its last leg, with three banks having committed so far.

The dollar high grade bond market returned to barnstorming form this week following the summer break with a Who’s Who of corporate America tapping the market.

The European high yield bond market returned from its summer break to €3bn of new bond offerings this week, including notes from Delaware’s Kronos International and California’s Equinix.

Agence Française de Développement stormed back into the dollar market on Thursday, printing its largest trade in the currency in six years with a comfortable oversubscription and tightened pricing. The deal put to rest AFD’s pulled dollar trade in February, said bankers.

Telefónica printed the largest single tranche of the day on Tuesday, with a €1.25bn deal with a January 2028 maturity. Despite competing with three other corporate bond deals in the euro market, the deal built a €3bn order book and was printed with a single digit new issue premium.

Natixis has hired Bryan North-Claus as head of fixed income sales Americas, as part of the French bank's push to improve its American business.

Liberbank, the Spanish retail banking group, has announced a €500m rights issue to improve its coverage of nonperforming assets (NPA) and to boost its capital ratio.

LCH SwapAgent has processed its first trades, with Citi and Deutsche Bank becoming the system's first counterparties as they executed a Swiss franc denominated interest rate swap and a euro denominated inflation swap.

Asian equity capital markets jolted back into life this week, with a handful of overnight blocks signalling the end of the summer lull during the constant furore on the Korean peninsula. Despite the uncertainty, bankers predict equity markets will absorb the noise and battle through. Jonathan Breen reports.