Morgan Stanley

WuXi AppTec took advantage of an incredible rally in its stock price and its rarity in the equity-linked market to raise $300m from a convertible bond that was a huge hit with investors. Rashmi Kumar reports.

Chinese local government financing vehicle (LGFV) Zhangzhou Jiulongjiang Group Co reopened the post-summer bond market with a $500m deal, making its debut in dollars.

Lagos-headquartered Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) has debuted in the Samurai loan market, raising a $150m-equivalent loan from a consortium of Japanese lenders. The deal is one of two Samurai loans signed by African borrowers in recent weeks.

Danaher printed its much anticipated €6.25bn jumbo bond issue on Tuesday. The US conglomerate, rated A2/A, focused its five tranches on intermediate to longer tenors, which corporate syndicate bankers took to indicate where many investors want to put their money.

Westpac placed just under HK$13.4bn into the Hong Kong market across two MTNs last week — the pair of bonds are its largest ever in the currency, according to Dealogic. The notes came in a busy week for niche issuance, and bankers have posited that this move into the peripheral markets comes as a response to the global fall in yields.

After issuing its biggest ever bond last week, Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten will wait until after the highly anticipated US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank meetings later this month before deciding what to do about its next benchmark new issue.

The investment grade corporate bond market appeared to be taking a more sedate pace this week compared to last week's stampede of new bond issues. There were three deals in the market on Monday, but the real action will begin once US borrowers and investors return from a public holiday on Tuesday, to be led by a deal from US conglomerate, Danaher.

Rabobank launched an additional tier one (AT1) bond with a record low coupon in the euro market this week. The Dutch bank started with price thoughts of 3.625%, but tightened by 40bp to smash through the previous record of 3.5%, set by Nordea in 2017.

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Compared with last year, employees at BNP Paribas and Société Générale are more disapproving of their chief executives and less optimistic on the outlook for their firms over the next six months, according to analysis carried out by UBS.

Czech consumer finance company Home Credit has begun work with investors for its IPO of around $1bn on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, testing investor appetite on Monday.

Three new investment grade corporate bonds appeared in Europe on Friday, a slower pace than the frenetic one of Tuesday and Wednesday, but still adding €1.6bn to the already huge total of €15.5bn in the middle three days of this week.