Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs has appointed a new head of investment banking in Saudi Arabia, after receiving approval from the country's Capital Markets Authority to trade equities there on Sunday.

On Tuesday LafargeHolcim became the first issuer for nearly two weeks to launch a corporate bond in Europe. The €750m 12 year deal received strong demand, which may lead other issuers to bring forward their plans.

The euro market for public sector borrowers appears to be fully reopening after the summer break, with a pair of issuers bringing mandates in very different tenors. Both trades are likely to benefit from the lack of supply over the last few weeks, said bankers.

European corporate bond market participants are expecting supply to start again after the UK bank holiday on August 28. Kimberly-Clark was the first issuer into the pipeline when it announced a European roadshow on Monday morning.

Goldman Sachs opened the Swiss market in the middle of the summer holidays on Thursday, selling the largest US financial Swiss franc bond in the last two years — a consequence, bankers said, of clever timing from a respected name.

Amazon dominated US corporate bond issuance this week, but aside from the online retailer’s $16bn jumbo deal, there was over $8bn of paper from five other issuers. However, bankers believe this will be the last week of material supply before the annual two week break in the US market.

Chinese live streaming platform YY tapped the US market this week with a block sale of American Depositary Shares (ADS), capitalising on a surging stock price. Bankers are preparing for a raft of similar block sales — as well as a growing list of US IPOs from Chinese companies. Jonathan Breen and John Loh report.

Bajaj Finance has set its sights on a Rp45bn ($703m) capital increase as in-demand Indian FIG issuers line up to tap equity investors.

Amazon priced the third jumbo M&A financing bond issue in a month in the US corporate bond market on Tuesday. The $16bn seven tranche package was the fourth-largest new issue of 2017, but the summer of 2017 could signal the high point of M&A related issuance for some time, writes Nigel Owen.

Global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) in the US will still have to issue billions of dollars of new bonds in 2017 to meet their regulatory requirements for long-term and loss-absorbing debt, potentially leading to a busy four months for primary market activity.

Chinese live streaming platform YY has raised $402.5m after taking advantage of a surging stock price to sell a block of its American Depositary Shares (ADS).

Amazon will dominate US corporate bond issuance on Tuesday when it announces a multi-tranche transaction to refinance the $13.7bn financing package put in place for its acquisition of Whole Foods.