GCC

Two CEEMEA sovereigns are taking the plunge this week — the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with a triple tranche dollar benchmark and Romania with a dual tranche euro bond.

Frequent syndicated loan borrower and United Arab Emirates-based aircraft lessor Dubai Aerospace Enterprise has raised a $300m term loan with Chinese banks.

Qatar Islamic Bank this week printed the Gulf region’s first Formosa sukuk, as issuers there stepped up their use of increasingly attractive Asian debt markets.

Capital Group, one of the largest asset managers in the US, bought 13.45m shares in NMC Health on January 8, according to a disclosure on the London Stock Exchange. They were worth about £160m. That was the day after a £375m block trade by Saeed Al Qebaisi and Khaleefa Al Muhairi, two of the three controlling shareholders in the UAE health company, which faced criticism from short-seller Muddy Waters of its balance sheet and financial statements in December.

Bahrain Mumtalakat, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, printed its $500m bond on Tuesday at 4.25% having tightened 62.5bp from initial guidance.

First Abu Dhabi Bank printed a quick $500m five year Reg S sukuk on Tuesday morning in London. Because the deal was driven by reverse enquiry, leads started the execution process by announcing final guidance.

Turkish lender Yapi Kredi ventured into the green bond market for the first time on Friday with a rare dollar private placement, its first since January 2016, according to Dealogic data.

Two major insiders offloaded £375m of stock in NMC Health, the troubled UAE-based private healthcare company to cover debts on Tuesday. The share sale, which was priced at a 19.7% discount to close, came weeks after a short selling attack on NMC Health by US activist hedge fund Muddy Waters, which caused the company to lose more than half of its market value.

Robert "Bob" Fernandez, a veteran of EM debt capital markets, has joined Saudi Aramco's treasury.

A weekend of hostile rhetoric between Iran and the US has caused equity capital markets bankers to consider delaying new deals from the Middle East despite a healthy issuance pipeline, over fears that the two countries are gearing up for war.

Etihad Airways has signed a €100m loan linked to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The deal is one of the latest ESG-linked financings signed in the Middle East, which is developing an appetite for sustainability-linked debt.

Equity-linked bond investors were left hurting again this week after bonds and shares in NMC Healthcare, the London-listed Emirati private healthcare business, were hit by accusations of fraud by short seller Muddy Waters. This is another painful episode for the convertible bond market after its troubles with Wirecard earlier in 2019, and an earlier scandal at Steinhoff International.