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State Bank of India successfully raised $600m with a bond issue underwritten by leading investment banks on Wednesday, just weeks after big investors divested from its green bonds because of its apparent intention to finance the controversial Carmichael coal mine being developed in Australia.

Issuers from Greater China flooded the market with dollar deals on Tuesday, capitalising on strong appetite from investors ready to put money to work in the new year.

Europe’s investment grade corporate bond market continued its blazing start to the year on a busy Tuesday with trades coming flat to or through secondary curves, and syndicate bankers say the blistering momentum is set to last throughout January.

Wessex Water, the UK utility, proved that there is still demand for sterling corporate paper in a post-Brexit world, achieving almost five times oversubscription for its 15 year bond.

Public sector borrowers soaked up huge demand in the euro market on Tuesday including the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, which printed its biggest ever 100 year bond despite offering a yield of less than 1%.

KfW and Swedish Export Credit Corporation (SEK) achieved strong results in sterling on Tuesday despite extremely volatile conditions in the currency as a result of uncertainty around the impact of Brexit and the rising cases of coronavirus in the UK, which has affected swap spreads and the cross-currency basis swap for non-UK borrowers.

A pair of senior non-preferred bonds from Swedbank and Société Générale on Tuesday followed Monday’s opener from ING. With three household names now having established pricing points, rarer borrowers are starting to fill the pipeline.

The Republic of Slovenia has repeated its 2020 feat of being the first sovereign issuer in CEEMEA to launch a bond by coming to the market with a mandate on Tuesday. Despite the apparent rush for bond funding, however, many believe that EU funding will provide some of what CEE countries would otherwise have taken from public bond markets.

American insurers Metropolitan Life and Athene Holding had a busy start to the year as they tapped the sterling, euro and dollar markets to issue a quartet of funding agreement backed (FAB) securities.

Indian borrowers re-entered the bond market on Monday, led by the Export-Import Bank of India which printed the country’s first dollar deal of 2021.

Hong Kong’s block market surged back to life on Monday night with a flurry of share sales worth a total of HK$14.19bn ($1.83bn).

Chinese property borrowers reopened Asia’s primary dollar bond market on Monday, with four issuers raising nearly $2bn between them following solid demand from investors.