Morgan Stanley

Postal Savings Bank of China has raised HK$57.6bn ($7.4bn) from its Hong Kong IPO after pricing the shares off the bottom of the range, with allocations dragging late into Wednesday evening.

Several European IPOs are progressing through bookbuilding this week, as issuers take advantage of a window of calm before the uncertainty of the US election in just over seven weeks time.

Postal Savings Bank of China has narrowed the price range on its Hong Kong IPO to the bottom half of guidance, and is set to raise up to HK$58.8bn ($7.6bn) in the world’s biggest listing in two years.

Takeaway.com, the Dutch online fast food delivery service, has opened the books for its €350m IPO, with a price range that could value the company at up to €1.1bn.

Honma Golf has started taking orders for its HK$1.5bn ($193.3m) listing, while China Merchants Securities Co is set to kick off its IPO next week.

Deutsche Bank is at real risk of failing to pay coupons on its additional tier one instruments, as a potential $14bn US RMBS settlement threatens to erase the bank's available distributable items (ADIs). Outstanding DB AT1 securities reacted accordingly last Friday, shooting nearly 200bp wider.

Telenor sold $1.5bn of shares in VimpelCom, the Russian telecoms company, this week, in a combined equity placing and exchangeable bond that were well received, despite the Uzbek bribery scandal that engulfed both companies last year.

Bayer clinched a $66bn agreement to buy Monsanto this week, forming a global leader in farming technology and promising a shower of capital markets transactions that will test debt and equity markets — but may also delight them.

The grins on the faces of Werner Baumann and Hugh Grant, chief executives of Bayer and Monsanto, look genuine enough. The deal they have struck could catapult Baumann to head of the world’s leading agribusiness company and net Grant a reported $226m.

Shares in Informa, the UK publishing and events company, closed 6% higher on Thursday after it launched a fully underwritten £715m rights issue to partially finance its £1.18bn takeover of Penton, the New York-based information services and business-to-business publisher, in a transatlantic deal which the company says will expand its reach in the global exhibitions industry.

Postal Savings Bank of China and its potential HK$62.7bn ($8.1bn) IPO got off to a roaring start due to hedge fund demand. Oversubscribed on day one, it is on track to be the world’s largest IPO in two years. But an order book so far dominated by regional names is about to get a lot more global as management leaves Hong Kong for roadshows in the UK and US. Jonathan Breen reports.

Bayer, the German life sciences company, has clinched an agreement with the board of Monsanto to buy the US company for an enterprise value of $66bn, to be financed with one of the largest rights issues in history.