JP Morgan

Oil major BP and motorbike maker Harley-Davidson both hit the euro bond market on Tuesday, in the wake of the European Central Bank’s far bigger than expected first week of corporate bond purchases.

RusHydro will return to the international bond market for roubles with a deal that will likely take 2019’s total issuance in the format above last year’s total.

Antonio Brina is joining JP Morgan from Bank of America Merrill Lynch to lead basic materials investment banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Egypt is in market promoting a new deal: three tranches of benchmark dollar funding. Its 40 year tranche will be Egypt’s longest ever deal.

Road King Infrastructure returned to the dollar market for the fourth time this year on Monday. The borrower, which has favoured fixed-for-life perpetual bonds before, offered investors a slightly different perpetual deal this time that would see its coupon be reset but has no additional step-up.

Dutch firm Prosus heaped pressure on Just Eat’s merger with Takeaway.com on Monday, after the consumer internet company published an official offer document that Just Eat’s board has urged its investors to reject.

Royal Dutch Shell’s choice this week of a tight syndicate, heavy with US banks, to lead $4bn and €3bn of bonds has laid bare the sense of vulnerability among banks outside the US bulge bracket, as some expressed resentment at being left out of a lucrative and prestigious mandate.

High grade dollar bond investors are braced for the biggest deal of the year after AbbVie, the pharmaceutical company, appointed a trio of banks to lead a possible $25bn issue that could come as soon as Monday.

Two SSA borrowers tapped the seven year part of the euro curve this week, but came away with different results. Luxembourg received an oversubscribed book for its deal on Wednesday, while Nederlandse Waterschapsbank (NWB Bank) had to price without fully placing its €1bn trade.

Investors staged a protest over pricing in the non-preferred senior bond market this week, causing one transaction to fail and putting two others at risk of falling flat. Comfortable with their returns for 2019 and happy to be able to choose from a glut of new bond offerings, funds have simply been happy to divert their attention elsewhere. Tyler Davies reports.

La Banque Postale is looking to strengthen its capital position with a new additional tier one bond, beginning investor meetings on Friday. The issuer joins a growing trend towards issuers employing six month par call options in their perpetual securities.

Serbia has returned to the euro market after only four months, tapping the line it opened in June this year and raising cash to refinance dollar obligations it faces in 2020.