Morgan Stanley

Saudi Arabia’s newfound zeal for international loans is testing some lenders’ credit limits for the country, as banks prepare to digest an up to $50bn financing for Saudi Aramco. Michael Turner reports.

Rating: A1/A

The Development Bank of Japan was able to tighten pricing on a €700m October 2025 sustainability bond this week, something not every issuer has found possible in the currency in the past few weeks. Meanwhile, the World Bank tapped an old friend for $200m with a green bond.

The order book for Afreximbank’s revived five year dollar benchmark had filled with more than $1bn of orders by Thursday lunchtime, according to a banker close to the deal.

Innovent Biologics is gauging investor appetite for an IPO in Hong Kong that could hit screens by mid-next week, according to a banker on the trade.

Tencent Music Entertainment Group has started pre-deal investor education for one of the highest-profile IPOs by a Chinese firm in the US this year.

Yancoal Australia has passed a listing hearing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is preparing for the launch of its IPO this month.

The first two major IPOs of the autumn, Funding Circle and SIG Combibloc, have both stayed above water in trading.

US healthcare company Abbott Laboratories debuted in the European corporate bond market on Monday, selling a €3.42bn triple-tranche deal. The proceeds of the jumbo deal were to repay the issuer’s outstanding deals in dollars.

Corporate dollar bond issuance ended a bumper month with a whimper as borrowers fought shy either side of the Fed’s September meeting.

German publishing company Bertelsmann returned to the euro corporate bond market on Tuesday to re-market a deal it had pulled in May after setting the spread. This time the issuer priced the transaction at what was seen as a more realistic spread, but the high premium was in part due to the illiquidity of the secondary curve.

A sale of shares Basic Fit by 3i was greeted warmly by investors on Wednesday night, but fell in trading on Thursday.