Frontier currency bonds are offering development finance institutions (DFIs) a way to offset exchange rate risks for their clients during the coronavirus crisis. With the number of disruptive events increasing, market participants feel that frontier currency bonds could provide a prudent way to decrease risk for developing country borrowers.

After a rocky two months, the CP market is starting to normalise as spreads track in to their pre-pandemic levels and borrowers find themselves flush with cash.

The Asian Development Bank sold the first ever Mongolian togrog denominated bond this week, funding a local dairy farm project in the country.

Alberta made its first foray into the Norwegian kroner market on Thursday — the same day that S&P placed the province’s credit outlook on negative.

The Inter-American Development Bank has bumped up its 2020 funding programme by almost a quarter to fund its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Unsecured euro money market borrowing this week reached its highest level since the European Central Bank began publishing statistics in November 2017, driven by issuers scrambling for funds to combat the coronavirus pandemic, according to one analyst.

The Bank of England this week signaled that it is changing its stance and considering bringing its base rate into negative territory. But with the UK Debt Management Office (DMO) issuing three year paper with a negative yield for the first time, as well as printing £7bn ($8.56bn) of 41 year bonds, there are few worries for the SSA market.

The recent maturity of a large Nokkie line released NOK9bn ($904.5m) into the market last week, with some foreign investors eager to reinvest in attractive short end paper.

JP Morgan, the leading SSA bookrunner over the last five years, is clinging onto pole position for 2020, despite a mighty effort from Citi, which has topped the rankings since the Covid-19 pandemic began disrupting markets in earnest. But it is a far different picture in SSA MTNs with Scandinavians surging to the top, thanks to a growth in niche currency supply.

The pain that negative rates in dollars could cause money market funds hangs like an albatross around the US Federal Reserve’s neck. Talk of them has picked up over the last week as US Federal Funds Futures prices started to imply they were on their way, while president Donald Trump pushed the topic on Twitter, even though and Fed chair Jerome Powell appeared to rule them out.

The Norges Bank surprised the market with an unexpected base rate cut to a record low of zero on Thursday. Since the start of the year, coronavirus volatility and wildly gyrating oil prices have buffeted the value of the kroner.

Since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, Finland has found a novel way to meet its increased funding needs: private placements. Over the last six weeks, the sovereign has supplemented its regular auctions with €5.65bn of privately placed trades, issuing private debt off its benchmark bond programme for the first time ever.