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German pharmaceutical company Bayer is set to contribute to one of the largest weeks of the year by issuance volume for the corporate bond market. Other issuers are watching the developments of that deal closely and planning their own movements around it.

It is a mark of how far the market has come from a barren week at the end of May that not just one, but three deals, totalling €2.75bn, were priced on Friday. The European Central Bank meeting and the expectation of a deal from German pharmaceuticals company Bayer played their part in the issuers’ decisions on timing and the order books justified those choices.

Despite receiving one of the largest IMF bail-out packages in history, Lat Am bankers are sanguine on the outlook for Argentine DCM activity this year. They say this is as much to do with the broader weakness in emerging markets as it is to do with Argentina’s economic recovery.

The return to health of the investment grade corporate bond market has been a path carefully trodden one step at a time. French electrical components manufacturer Schneider printed a successful nine year new issue on Wednesday, following corporate deals with eight and seven year tenors on the previous days of the week, but the lack of other supply surprised some bankers.

Mergers and acquisitions fever is gripping the dollar market as investors are primed for jumbo deals from AT&T and Bayer.

Two issuers from the CEEMEA region — Bulgarian Energy Holding and Ecobank Transnational Inc — have mandated banks for new bonds and are embarking on roadshows, breaking the wait-and-see mode that the market had slipped into over the last week.

The European Central Bank surprised some corporate bond market participants on Thursday by setting out how it expects monetary policy to evolve over the next year and a half.

Bonuses should be awarded for good behaviour, not just financial performance, said a senior Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) official this week.

Ecobank Transnational Incorporated, a pan-African banking group, is the only CEEMEA issuer to have publicly progressed with bond plans this week, setting the roadshow for its debut dollar bond. A syndicate official on the deal said that lead managers are confident of demand, but a rival questioned whether a single-B rated sub-Saharan issuer could reopen the market.

German chemicals producer BASF found overwhelming demand for its first sterling corporate bond of 2018 this week. The issuer’s £250m ($330m) offering was more than six times oversubscribed on Thursday, as sterling investors clamoured for a rare non-UK credit.

The return to health of the investment grade corporate bond market has been a carefully trodden path, one step at a time. On Wednesday, French electrical components manufacturer Schneider printed a successful nine year new issue, following corporate deals with eight and seven year tenors on the previous days of the week.

The margins paid by Michigan utility CMS Energy on two revolving credit facilities totalling $1.4bn will, for the first time, be linked to its sustainability goals, as a result of amendments signed on June 5.