Middle East Bonds

The poll is open for GlobalCapital’s Equity Capital Markets Awards for 2017 and we invite market participants to have their say on the best performers of last year.

Emerging market borrowers will front-load their funding tasks in 2018, according to several EM bankers who are predicting a busy month.

Israel has returned to dollars for its first trade of 2018, picking leads for a dual tranche 10 and/or 30 year bond.

Oman became the first CEEMEA borrower to hit the screens this year with an official mandate. It has named five lead managers to arrange a triple tranche dollar bond as it looks to fund a Omr3bn ($7.8bn) budget deficit for 2018.

Emerging market bond fund managers say they are markedly more optimistic than 12 months ago when the "whole world was negative" after the start of Donald Trump’s US presidential term. And with plenty of sovereign trades rumoured for January, there is an abundance of investment opportunities.

For CEEMEA bonds, 2017 was a record breaking year and one which pushed the boundaries of product, tenor, and issuer. The $200bn of bonds raised in CEEMEA, and the $140bn raised in Latin America are the highest annual volumes on record. Investors’ seemingly insatiable appetite for EM debt fuelled massive inflows into the asset class and kept the many idiosyncratic risk events – from Qatar’s regional isolation to deteriorating relations between Turkey and the US– contained. Picking out the deals of the year for 2017 was not easy for GlobalCapital’s editorial team, but after much deliberation the below were chosen.

Nomura has hired Nihal Elkafrawi as head of client coverage for the Middle East and north Africa. She will foster cross-selling opportunities for global markets and investment banking, the bank said in a statement.

UK and Chinese officials press ahead with London-Shanghai Stock Connect, China tops the October league table of foreign holders of US Treasuries, and Bank of China opens a new branch in Qatar.

Qatar’s banks have been turning to collateralised borrowing to boost liquidity after being all but shut out of the public debt markets since June, and the deals are proving mutually beneficial to both lender and borrower, with international banks able to continue to show support for Qatar.

Citigroup has hired Majed Al-Hassoun to spearhead the relaunch of its investment banking effort in Saudi Arabia.

Debut sukuk issuer Emirates Reit on Wednesday priced a larger than expected deal of $400m after books reached nearly $1bn.

Doha Bank Qatar has sold a yen clip through MUFG, its first since June when the country became embroiled in a regional diplomatic spat. The trade is illustrative of a gradual return by investors to Qatari credits, said MTN bankers.