North America

Morgan Stanley more than doubled its revenue from fixed income sales and trading in the fourth quarter of last year, completing a stellar set of earnings for US banks in that business after a year in which they appear to have cemented their dominance in Europe.

US issuers are tapping into favourable conditions the euro bond market after reporting their latest results. Goldman Sachs and New York Life Insurance were quick to launch senior bonds on Thursday, boosting supply volumes just as European lenders start preparing for their own reporting season.

Capital Group, one of the largest asset managers in the US, bought 13.45m shares in NMC Health on January 8, according to a disclosure on the London Stock Exchange. They were worth about £160m. That was the day after a £375m block trade by Saeed Al Qebaisi and Khaleefa Al Muhairi, two of the three controlling shareholders in the UAE health company, which faced criticism from short-seller Muddy Waters of its balance sheet and financial statements in December.

South Korea’s Mirae Asset Daewoo has been ordered to pay $700,000 after a US Commodity Futures Trading Commission investigation found one of its traders had engaged in spoofing.

KfW and Canada both launched dollar benchmarks on Wednesday, bringing a pair of highly subscribed and tight deals. Following their success, two Asian SSA issuers prepare to join the busy dollar market.

Navigating the covered bond market will not be without its challenges in 2020. The Targeted Longer Term Refinancing Operation (TLTRO), European Central Bank deposit tiering and the Covered Bond Purchase Programme have collectively distorted the market, but added to this concoction is the impact of negative interest rates. Against this backdrop issuers, investors and investment bankers gathered in Munich in November to discuss the outlook for covered bonds. It is likely that new issue premiums will gradually tighten, but the path is unlikely to be smooth. January is typically the busiest month, but in 2019, issuers that funded this early paid the highest spreads. And, with the ECB expected to buy in the region of €4.5bn covered bonds a month, issuers will not feel compelled to move early. But the ECB monetary policy has unwelcome implications. Covered bonds have begun to lose value against government bonds, and this will extend if the ECB is unable to loosen restrictions on government bond purchases.

Fomento Económico Mexicano (Femsa), the Mexican conglomerate, sold $1.5bn of 30 year bonds on Tuesday more than three months after completing a roadshow as DCM bankers said that the decision not to bow to investor demands last year had paid off.

Remarkable funding conditions drove Mexico to the euro market on Tuesday just a week after it issued in dollars as a bulging order book again suggested that investor fears over the government’s management of the economy have subsided.

CPPIB Capital is looking to take advantage of a red hot sterling bond market after hiring banks on Monday to prepare its debut trade in the currency.

A lack of supply relative to 2019 and much more aggressive central bank buying ensured that Banco Sabadell, Royal Bank of Canada, Deutsche Bank and RLB Oberösterreich were able to price their respective covered bonds flat to fair value on Monday.

China’s challenger to Starbucks, Luckin Coffee, has raised $979.6m after increasing the size of a combined sale of new shares and a convertible bond, the first tap of the ADS equity-linked market in 2020.

Mexico’s head of public credit told GlobalCapital that he felt the government’s economic management was winning over investors after the sovereign notched a heavily oversubscribed dollar deal last week.