North America

BBVA’s Mexican subsidiary, Bancomer, on Tuesday provided one of the clearest examples yet of the attractiveness of international bond markets for Latin American borrowers as it notched the lowest ever coupon on a dollar deal from a bank from the region.

Altice France is marketing a €900m equivalent eight year bond across dollars and euros, coming hot on the heels of Friday’s announcement that Patrick Drahi, the billionaire owner of the telecoms group, was trying to take Altice Europe private.

Morningstar, the US investment research firm, is marketing US private placements for the first time in its 26 year history, according to several sources familiar with the situation.

Seven months after it visited European investors to market the idea, Mexico sold the first sovereign bond explicitly aligned to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) on Monday, saying it was the first step on the way to building an external yield curve of sustainable bonds.

Mexican cement producer Cemex sold its second dollar bond in three months on Monday, fetching lower pricing at a longer maturity than on its June outing as observers saw a slim new issue concession amid what one analyst called recent “insatiable” demand for the credit.

BBVA’s Mexican subsidiary BBVA Bancomer is looking for its first international bond in a year after mandating banks to lead a senior unsecured deal.

French agency Cades will debut its social bond framework in dollars on Tuesday, less than a week after it raised the largest ever bond in the format with its inaugural issue in euros. It will share the market with the International Development Association (IDA), which is preparing to kick off its 2020/21 funding year with a sustainable development benchmark of its own.

This week in Keeping Tabs: the state of EU capital markets and whether good government matters, a profile of Mairead McGuinness, and Adam Tooze on central banks.

Michael Corbat is to retire from Citigroup in February, and Jane Fraser will step up as chief executive.

Chinese hospitality company Huazhu Group has launched a secondary offering in Hong Kong, the latest in a growing number of dual listings on the bourse.

Nestlé made the tech stock sell-off look irrelevant as it raced into the US corporate bond market as soon as it opened this week, raising $4bn and scoring the lowest coupons on record for a 144A issuer at those maturities on each of its four tranches.

The resilience of capital markets in the face of the coronavirus pandemic has encouraged equity issuers and sellers to bring an abundance of IPOs, rights issues and block trades this autumn. Indices have bounced since their March nadir but their vulnerability — and that of ECM activity — to the tech stocks that have driven the rebound was made stark this week when the Nasdaq index fell more than 10% in two days, write Sam Kerr and Aidan Gregory.