JP Morgan

There were no problems with competing supply as a trio of public sector borrowers enjoyed strong demand for dollar bonds this week, despite all three having the same maturity.

How much emphasis do you put on a tweet? According to JP Morgan and its recent ‘Volfefe Index’, 280 characters is all US president Donald Trump needs to shock the markets. The aim is to create an index “to measure the impact of the president’s tweets on rates volatility”. However, with algorithmic trading and tweet aggregation commonplace, many market participants are unconvinced that the index brings anything new to the table.

SSA issuers turned towards niche currencies this week to meet a range of demand across the Australian and Canadian dollar curves. KfW and the Asian Development Bank started the week printing in Australian dollars, before the World Bank joined them in the currency while also returning to the Maple market.

Bank of Montreal and Rothesay Life made use of the quieter political situation in the UK this week to issue in sterling, in the same week issuance paced down in the euro market ahead of the European Central Bank’s meeting.

Russian pipe manufacturer Chelyabinsk Pipe Plant on Thursday sold one of the tightest ever Russian debut bonds, according to a lead manager on the note.

Mexican oil company Pemex is set to “defend its ratings” with an imminent new issue, bond exchange and buy-back to be partially funded by a capital injection from the government.

A pair of Eastern European corporate borrowers are in the market for dollar paper on Thursday, taking advantage of excellent market conditions to secure cheap funding.

Alpek, the petrochemicals business of Mexican conglomerate Grupo Alfa, sold a $500m 10 year bond on Wednesday at the tight end of expectations to become the latest in a line of Mexican issuers to tap the primary market in September.

Mexican state-owned oil giant Pemex emphatically showed it has access to capital markets on Thursday as it received more than $35bn of orders on the way to a $7.5bn trade that could grow as existing bondholders participate in an exchange.

In the nervous last day before the European Central Bank's much-hyped monetary policy announcement on Thursday, only two corporate bond issuers brought deals. Both Orange, the French telecoms group, and Worldline, the French payments group carved out of Atos.

JP Morgan this week issued a €400m cash-settled exchangeable on LVMH, the French luxury goods conglomerate, in its latest synthetic outing, raising cheap funding while possibly hedging a derivatives transaction.

IHS, the Nigerian telecom towers group, hit screens on Wednesday for a dual tranche bond. It received strong demand and the leads were able to tighten the spread and add an extra $300m to the longer tranche.