JP Morgan

With public sector borrowers having reached advanced stages in their annual funding programmes as the first quarter comes to a close, focus is shifting to socially responsible bonds.

With just over three weeks to go until Easter, the latest wave of IPOs in EMEA is progressing well. One deal was priced on Tuesday and bookbuilds have begun for two more.

South Korea’s Shinhan Bank secured a tightly priced $500m deal on Tuesday, taking advantage of an otherwise quiet market as well as the Monday success of Korea National Oil Corp.

The socially responsible bond pipeline ballooned on Tuesday, with a European supranational announcing a roadshow for a debut issue, a French agency mandating for a deal and a Washington supranational pricing a social bond in benchmark size for the first time.

Turkey’s Turkiye Sinai Kalkinma Bankasi (TSKB) made a second pioneering move into the sustainable bond market with the world’s first sustainable tier two bond on Tuesday, following on from a senior green bond last year.

Lebanon took orders of nearly $18bn for its largest ever bond on Monday and quality international participation was seen in a book that remained dominated by local accounts, according to bankers on the deal.

Korea National Oil Corp (KNOC) took advantage of the positive market on Monday to price three $500m tranches of new notes at an attractive price, while still offering investors some cushion on the fixed rate portions.

Shinhan Bank launched a new five year dollar deal on Tuesday, following its compatriot Korea National Oil Corp into the debt market.

Buoyed by relief following a Dutch election in which Eurosceptic Geert Wilders’ hopes of forming a government were dashed, public sector borrowers are flocking back to capital markets.

John Laing Infrastructure Fund, the FTSE 250-listed closed end investment fund, is raising £122m through a capital increase led by JP Morgan to reduce its debt after investing in over 60 projects since its creation in 2010.

A pair of public sector borrowers are set to bring socially responsible bonds this week, with one aiming at the dollar short end and the other at the long end of the euro curve.

Chemours, the listed US chemicals firm spun out of DuPont in 2015, held a lender call on Monday afternoon for a $350m-equivalent euro term loan to repay some of its existing dollar loan.