Middle East

Emerging market borrowers will front-load their funding tasks in 2018, according to several EM bankers who are predicting a busy month.

Equity syndicates expect a robust IPO pipeline to power strong issuance in the first half of this year, which could set 2018 up to surpass what was a good 2017.

Qatar’s Doha Bank extended a $575m loan that was scheduled to mature at the end of last year but it did not extend the whole amount as the deal's Chinese lenders pulled out.

Israel has returned to dollars for its first trade of 2018, picking leads for a dual tranche 10 and/or 30 year bond.

Oman became the first CEEMEA borrower to hit the screens this year with an official mandate. It has named five lead managers to arrange a triple tranche dollar bond as it looks to fund a Omr3bn ($7.8bn) budget deficit for 2018.

Emerging market bond fund managers say they are markedly more optimistic than 12 months ago when the "whole world was negative" after the start of Donald Trump’s US presidential term. And with plenty of sovereign trades rumoured for January, there is an abundance of investment opportunities.

For CEEMEA bonds, 2017 was a record breaking year and one which pushed the boundaries of product, tenor, and issuer. The $200bn of bonds raised in CEEMEA, and the $140bn raised in Latin America are the highest annual volumes on record. Investors’ seemingly insatiable appetite for EM debt fuelled massive inflows into the asset class and kept the many idiosyncratic risk events – from Qatar’s regional isolation to deteriorating relations between Turkey and the US– contained. Picking out the deals of the year for 2017 was not easy for GlobalCapital’s editorial team, but after much deliberation the below were chosen.

Is Financal Kiralama (Is Leasing), Isbank’s leasing arm, is expected to sign a $75m loan which it has mandated Bank ABC to arrange.

Nomura has hired Nihal Elkafrawi as head of client coverage for the Middle East and north Africa. She will foster cross-selling opportunities for global markets and investment banking, the bank said in a statement.

Ak Finansal Kiralama (Aklease), Akbank’s leasing subsidiary, has signed a $110m syndicated loan to fund renewable energy projects.

Savannah Petroleum, the UK oil and gas company focusing on African exploration, has secured a partnership with ASMA Capital Partners, a Bahraini fund manager which invests on behalf of the Islamic Development Bank, as part of its equity capital raising, which is set to be priced today.

Saudi Arabian Mining's (Ma’aden) subsidiary Ma’aden Aluminium has signed a $1.78bn syndicated loan to refinance a facility signed seven years ago.