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French certification agency Bureau Veritas had its credentials stamped by investors on Thursday when it sold its third deal in three years. The unrated issuer received €1bn of demand for its €500m long six year deal.

Investors, bankers and traders have lined up to pour scorn on Ghana finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta’s expectations that the country will issue $5bn-$10bn of century bonds before the end of the year, the first part of a plan to sell $50bn of such bonds.

African private placements are expected to rise in the coming months as issuers eschew the high prices of public bonds after the emerging markets sell-off over the summer.

Carl Mace has started at ICBC Standard Bank to trade hard currency EM sovereign debt.

When UK telecoms company Vodafone announced in May that it had agreed to buy some of US rival Liberty Global’s European operations, it said it would use existing cash, €3bn of mandatorily convertible bonds and new debt, including hybrid bonds to fund the €18.4bn acquisition. On Wednesday, Vodafone sold the hybrid bonds, using four different tenors in three currencies.

Hungary printed its €1bn seven year bond on Tuesday with the lowest ever coupon and yield for a dollar or euro bond from the issuer.

US asset manager Pinebridge is positive on credit markets in the short to medium term, but the outperformance of assets in the past three years has increased the probability for a credit downturn according to a recent report it published.

French electricity utility EDF sold the first hybrid corporate bond deal in the euro market for more than two months on Tuesday, as it launched a tender offer for its existing hybrids with the aim of maintaining its existing volume of outstanding bonds.

Eutelsat, the French satellite operator, would have been hoping for similar conditions to the previous week when it announced an investor call ahead of its first corporate bond deal in more than two years. The atmosphere had changed however by the time the deal was marketed on Tuesday.

German publishing company Bertelsmann returned to the euro corporate bond market on Tuesday to remarket a deal it had pulled in May after setting the spread. This time the issuer priced the transaction, but it had to pay a much larger new issue premium than others have done on recent deals.

Al Khalij Commercial Bank is embarking on a roadshow for a Reg S five year dollar benchmark bond.

The orderbook for Republic of Hungary’s seven year euro benchmark has blasted past €2bn and leads have tightened price guidance — a move expected by rivals as they said initial talk looked cheap.