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French aerospace and defence company Thales took a proven route to success when it sold a new dual tranche deal on Thursday, combining short dated floating rate notes with a fixed rate offering.

Rusal bondholders are in a pickle. They have been told by the US Treasury that they have 60 days to dump the sanctioned Russian company’s bonds, but trading has halted, leaving them stuck with the debt. Investors are lost as to how to value the bonds in their portfolios and are scrambling to work out how they can legally continue to hold and mark them.

The investment grade corporate euro bond market had shown a steady return to strength after Easter, but Thursday's five-deal spree tested its resolve . The market last saw that many deals on March 15 – a day described by one syndicate banker as a repricing point.

Vehicle makers and their finance arms continued their recent dominance of Europe’s investment grade corporate bond market. Renault, Volkswagen-owned Scania and Peugeot’s joint venture with Santander, PSA Banque, all priced deals on the same day this week, after three issues from their German peers in the previous seven days.

The investment grade corporate bond market has seen a “steady and sensible” start to April according to one investor as it attempts to stabilise following a volatile run through February and March.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia printed its $11bn bond on Tuesday, which several bankers and investors thought had been timed to maximise disruption of Qatar’s return to market, which is also expected this week. But leads said the modest size taken by Saudi from a $50bn book showed that there was no intention of throwing the capital markets into disarray.

Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings tested the appetite of the euro corporate bond market with a dual tranche deal, which included the first tranche longer than 10 years to be issued in nearly four weeks.

The sell-off in Russian bonds is battering emerging markets investors, who are seeing the biggest spread widening since sanctions were first imposed on the country in 2014. Not only have the bonds of freshly sanctioned Rusal tanked but other Russian companies are selling off as investors fear they may be next, and the rot is starting to spread to the wider central and eastern Europe region as well.

Saudi and Qatar look to be printing jumbo bonds this week, but the timing of both in the same few days after so many months of waiting is prompting chatter about which sovereign has caused the traffic jam and whether political machinations are behind it.

The Eurasian Development Bank has embarked on a roadshow for a three to five year tenge denominated Eurobond.

BMW sold one of the first two trades in the euro corporate bond market in 2018. It took until April to follow that with a five-tranche offering in the dollar market. It waited less than the week then to make its first visit to the sterling market, but found sterling investors in a similarly stubborn mood to that of euro investors.

General Mills put the investment grade corporate dollar market back on a more positive course this week with a tightly priced trade that paved the way for a rebound in supply.