MUFG

Two African borrowers are set to hit the road for dollar bonds, extending a run of deals from the continent after a slow start to the year.

The strength of corporate bond demand, after falls in stockmarkets engendered by the US's hardened stance on trade talks with China, will be tested in the US on Wednesday by a $20bn issue for IBM. In Europe, the test could come on Thursday, since a handful of issuers finished roadshows on Wednesday.

BP on Thursday gave the European corporate bond market its first test of a really big, multi-tranche, investment grade issue since Easter, and showed that the market is every bit as keen as before the break. Order books for the three part bond were big and new issue premiums slim to invisible.

The Manchester Airport Group, which owns Manchester, East Midlands and London Stansted airports, launched a £350m bond on Wednesday. In an investment grade corporate bond market that had otherwise been empty of new issues in the first half of the week, the deal was covered more than 3.5 times.

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MUFG has relocated 21 staff to Paris, including all its European DCM origination bankers, all its sales people who cover European investors and an MTN banker.

Bank of China sold another blockbuster Belt and Road transaction on Wednesday, raising $3.8bn across eight tranches of notes in five currencies across five bank branches, It was the largest transaction sold under the BRI label.

Genius Auto Finance, a joint venture between Geely Automobile Holdings and BNP Paribas Personal Finance, has raised Rmb3bn ($446m) from a three-tranche auto ABS. It was the tightest such deal this year, after receiving plenty of demand from foreign banks.

Reliance Industries is tapping the Japanese yen market as part of a $1.5bn dual-currency loan syndication.

Tony Lee has joined MUFG Bank (Hong Kong), to head the Japanese lender’s corporate banking business in east Asia.

Energy generator NTPC became the latest of a recent slew of Indian issuers to fund in the dollar bond market, with more deals underway.

Indonesia Eximbank is sending out a covenant waiver request for a $1.15bn loan it sealed last year, as the policy bank's non-performing loan (NPL) ratio rose higher than the covenant allows.