Morgan Stanley

Hong Kong’s securities regulator has fined Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered and UBS after investigations into the banks’ sponsorship of a series of IPOs. The Swiss bank has also had its sponsor licence revoked for a year. Jonathan Breen reports.

Dubai-based payments company Network International has kicked off investor education for its IPO on the London Stock Exchange, which is expected to value the business in the region of $3bn, according to a source close to the deal.

China’s industrial gas supplier Yingde Gases Group has launched a $300m borrowing into general syndication.

Oleg Tinkoff sold $150m worth of London-listed Global Depository Receipts in TCS Group Holding on, the Russian financial services company that controls Tinkoff Bank on Tuesday night.

The Republic of Ghana has picked banks for a bond deal and tender offer, preparing to become sub-Saharan Africa’s first sovereign issuer of the year. Benin is also believed to be eyeing a debut in the international bond market.

China’s industrial gas supplier Yingde Gases Group has launched a $300m borrowing into general syndication.

The largest block trade of 2019 so far — a €1.5bn stake in Dutch payments firm Adyen — flew off the shelves on Monday night, as large long-only accounts, mostly from the US, bought big slices of it.

Embassy Office Parks Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit) has global long-only investors on tenterhooks as it prepares to launch its smaller-than-expected Rp47.5bn ($683m) IPO, having filed the final terms for India’s first Reit listing.

Medacta, the Swiss maker of artificial human joints, has begun a process to list on the SIX Swiss Exchange before Easter. If it succeeds, it would be the first major company to complete an IPO in Europe this year.

SNCF Réseau took advantage of a move in swap spreads and a favourable euro/dollar basis swap to sell its third dollar benchmark on Friday, ahead of what SSA bankers say will be a busy week of supply in the currency. Nordic agencies are among the issuers expected to be come to the dollar market next week.

Telefónica, the Spanish telecoms group with €55bn of debt, came to the euro market on Tuesday to refinance two of its hybrid capital bonds. It launched a tender offer for the pair, which now total €1.3bn, and a hybrid new issue to replace them, tacking on opportunistically a 10 year senior bond issue.

Whether Vodafone’s £3.44bn issue of two and three year mandatorily convertible bonds on Tuesday this week ends up being judged a corporate finance success for the company may take time to discover. But it is already clear it was a great hit with investors — much more so than the first time Vodafone issued the structure in 2016.