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British American Tobacco’s €600m 30 year note sold on Tuesday is expected to herald a new wave of super-long corporate bonds in the currency, reports Richard Metcalf.

The stars aligned in the offshore renminbi market this week as moves in the cross currency basis swap with dollars drove a burst of demand in the medium term note format, with banks on the receiving end happy to print.

Russian potash producer Uralkali is in talks with international banks about getting a loan soon and a handful of other borrowers are also attempting deals.

Issuers were able to find dollar demand at levels well through mid-swaps this week as a slew of reassuringly expensive names looked to the most conservative of maturities.

Two block trades of around $1bn went well on Thursday night, as GlaxoSmithKline sold half its remaining 12.4% stake in Johannesburg-listed Aspen Pharmacare, while private equity funds shed the last chunk of ISS, the Danish cleaning firm.

The return of two Australian major banks to securitization this week helped put more than A$4bn equivalent of new RMBS and auto ABS bonds on the market.

Zimmer Holdings and JM Schmucker picked up the M&A financing baton from Actavis to lead an avalanche of new issuance as borrowers ploughed through softer markets, printing trades ahead of a crunch meeting of the Federal Reserve.

Aareal Bank this week became the second German issuer this year to price a US dollar denominated Reg S Pfandbrief. It follows the lead of LBBW which priced a similar deal two weeks ago. Though the actual funding converted back to euros will have been nominally higher than what it could have achieved in euros, savings will have been made on swaps costs.

A tricky secondary market was unable to derail the new issue pipeline in senior this week, with new deals selling well even as their predecessors underperformed.

Default fund contributions by central counterparties, known as skin in the game, are not the only risk management mechanisms for clearing house operations and resolution systems, and they do not compensate for other risk mitigation strategies, said market officials.

Coventry Building Society became the first UK issuer to spurn the conventional three year sterling floating rate covered bond sector, and following its recent roadshow, sold a five year floating rate sterling benchmark covered bond on Tuesday.

Austrian and German Pfandbriefe came under pressure this week, after Fitch and Moody’s took negative rating action against a number of entities.