JP Morgan

German retail conglomerate Douglas Holding closed the order books on Friday for its €1.085bn leveraged loan deal, which reprices its drawn and undrawn debt at borrower-friendly margins.

Associated British Ports, which owns and operates 21 ports in England, Scotland and Wales, has refinanced the last of its batch of loans signed in 2011 with £400m of new revolving credit facilities.

The Indian government has started holding investor roadshows which will seek investors’ interest for the sale of shares in Steel Authority of India Ltd (Sail) even though the meetings are being described as non-deal by bankers.

E-commerce firm Alibaba Group, which was expected to open books for a jumbo IPO on September 2, has decided to push back bookbuilding by a week. This is bad news for other issuers sitting on the sidelines as they will have to wait slightly longer before they go ahead with their own listings.

Indonesian industrial estate developer Kawasan Indus tri Jababeka is meeting investors in Asia this week for an exchange offer of its existing 2017s. Those bonds have rallied in secondary as the exchange offer is the only way investors can get their hands on the new bonds which are offering an attractive yield.

Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA

BMW reopened the European benchmark investment grade corporate bond new issue market on Tuesday with a punchy €1.75bn deal that sent a strong signal: spreads — and especially yields — for corporate issuers are set for a very tight autumn. BMW paid a coupon of just 0.5% on its €1bn four year tranche. But despite these pitifully thin yields, investors are eager to buy.

Mergers and acquisitions are set to be an important driver of corporate bond issuance this autumn. Deal mandates are already building up — in fact, M&A is the driver for virtually all the deals that have yet appeared in Europe’s corporate bond pipeline this season.

The additional tier one deal pipeline may have shuddered back into life earlier than expected this week as two banks announced roadshows following a rally inspired by inspired by dovish comments from European Central Bank president Mario Draghi. But volatility has since set back into the market and looks ready to test the asset class’s hardiness, writes Graham Bippart.

The supranational and agency issuers that reopened benchmark issuance in dollars this week enjoyed strong demand as investors starved of supply scrambled to put their cash to work.

Burgan Bank has set investor meetings for the first ever international perpetual tier one bond from Kuwait. The Reg S benchmark dollar bond is being arranged by Citi, HSBC, JP Morgan and National Bank of Abu Dhabi.

Concerns that there would be a dearth of additional tier one (AT1) deals ahead of the European Central Bank’s Asset Quality Review appear to be receding as Santander joins the pipeline, mandating leads for its second euro denominated AT1.