JP Morgan

China Merchants Bank priced three year bonds on Wednesday that were split between a $600m floating rate note (FRN) and a €300m fixed rate tranche.

It's not often a €1.75bn deal from Volkswagen Leasing is overshadowed in the corporate bond market, though that was the case on Wednesday with Berkshire Hathaway's £1.75bn 20 and 40 year stormer. But Berkshire left euros clear for Volkswagen - it only had Bright Food of China to compete with.

The sterling corporate bond market has shown surprising strength for issuers in short maturities this year, but on Wednesday its traditional forte shone through — the ultra-long end, where, as so often, the curve is inverted. Berkshire Hathaway found such good funding there that it scrapped a planned euro issue altogether and raised £1.75bn in sterling.

There was high demand for dollar SSA paper as Kommunalbanken (KBN) printed at its tightest ever spread against the US Treasuries on Wednesday. Meanwhile the Province of Ontario has mandated for its own benchmark transaction.

It took just over two hours on Wednesday morning for the IPO of Trainline, the UK transport booking website, to get covered after the company opened the books on its £630m IPO on the London Stock Exchange.

The Republic of Croatia launched its €1.5bn 10 year bond on Wednesday afternoon in London from a book of €6.4bn at a level 7bp inside of fair value, according to a lead manager on the note.

TBC Bank, Georgia’s largest bank by assets, loans and deposits, has set the size for its debut dollar bond at $300m and order books for the deal are already well over that amount.

The Republic of Lithuania has set spreads on its 10 year and 30 year euro bonds having crunched 10bp from initial guidance.

JP Morgan has hired Patrik Czornik to lead its M&A team for Germany. Czornik used to work for the bank in the past but then joined Goldman Sachs.

JP Morgan has added Gregor Feige and Philip Wong to its Asia Pacific ECM team, according to an internal memo seen by GlobalCapital Asia on Wednesday.

An order book that was more than 15 times covered allowed first-time issuer Shanghai International Port (Group) Co to not only beat its price target in the primary market, but also see its $700m bonds perform well in secondary.

Huatai Securities has already covered the minimum target for its global depository receipts (GDRs) IPO on the London Stock Exchange, according to a source close to the deal.