JP Morgan

The Government of Mongolia is out with a 144A/Reg S bond, more than two months after holding meetings with potential investors. Delayed by a series of negative macro factors, the sovereign is offering an attractive yield when compared with its outstanding notes.

Hong Kong Airlines made a quick return to the international bond market on Wednesday with a $120m tap of its maiden dollar issue from January.

Will euros or dollars dominate SSA bond issuance in the second quarter? Debate over the direction of primary markets broke out this week with issuers scheming arbitrage trades in euros, while others believe the dollars will win out. Craig McGlashan reports.

Standard & Poor’s astonished the equity-linked bond market on Wednesday evening by stripping the equity credit from Vodafone’s £2.9bn mandatory convertibles, issued in February, only a month after assigning the credit. The change knocks away one advantage of the deal for Vodafone and may damage banks’ hopes of replicating it.

Unédic

The UK mid-market for investment banking is facing another round of consolidation after regulatory pressures and a faltering IPO market have wrought havoc on the sector, writes David Rothnie.

Covered bond primary activity slowed this week with just two €500m seven year trades emerging from banks in the Netherlands and Italy.

Senvion, the German wind turbine maker, listed in Frankfurt on Wednesday after a tortuous process that saw the firm’s owners pull its IPO last week, then grudgingly relaunch it just five days later in a shrunken, cheaper format.

Investors continued to pour money into the US corporate bond market this week as March's rally in high grade bonds turned the market positive for the year.

Several large banks active in European ECM breathed a sigh of relief this week, as they completed the tortuous IPO of German wind turbine marker Senvion — one of only a few listings on offer in the quiet lead-up to Easter.

China's Fosun International is planning to spin off and list wholly-owned insurance subsidiary Ironshore, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

A trio of issuers in euros joined the sole dollar SSA benchmark deal this week in a flurry of pre-holiday activity, with a banker away from the this week's action remarking that the terrorist attacks in Belgium were likely to have a limited effect on SSA deals.