North America

Moody’s slashed Ford’s rating from Baa3 to Ba1 on Monday, placing the company in precarious crossover territory, with S&P and Fitch holding the firm at BBB with negative outlook. Other falling angels may land in the junkyard soon as the triple-B sector has ballooned to record levels.

How much emphasis do you put on a tweet? According to JP Morgan and its recent ‘Volfefe Index’, 280 characters is all US president Donald Trump needs to shock the markets. The aim is to create an index “to measure the impact of the president’s tweets on rates volatility”. However, with algorithmic trading and tweet aggregation commonplace, many market participants are unconvinced that the index brings anything new to the table.

Bank of Montreal and Rothesay Life made use of the quieter political situation in the UK this week to issue in sterling, in the same week issuance paced down in the euro market ahead of the European Central Bank’s meeting.

Mexican oil company Pemex is set to “defend its ratings” with an imminent new issue, bond exchange and buy-back to be partially funded by a capital injection from the government.

Alpek, the petrochemicals business of Mexican conglomerate Grupo Alfa, sold a $500m 10 year bond on Wednesday at the tight end of expectations to become the latest in a line of Mexican issuers to tap the primary market in September.

Bank of Montreal was marketing a senior preferred bond in sterling on Tuesday, one day after Rothesay Life gave FIG investors a chance to put their money in tier two in the same currency. The Canadian issuer started its trade with a 15bp-20bp concession, according to a banker off the deal.

Moody’s slashed Ford’s rating from Baa3 to Ba1 on Monday, placing the company in precarious crossover territory, as the other agencies have the firm on negative outlook. Other falling angels may land in the junkyard soon.

One of the world’s largest companies made its debut in the yen bond market last week, as Berkshire Hathaway placed ¥430bn ($4bn) of multi-tranche debt. With the Japanese government yield curve offering sub-zero returns for anything under 15 years, the six tranche deal offered investors a chance to earn a yield pick-up, according to bankers away from the deal.

FIG borrowers jumped into the dollar market with lightning speed this week, snapping up attractive financing rates.

In this round-up, the US and China agree to meet in October in Washington, Hong Kong's chief executive formally withdraws the extradition bill and the Chinese state council is set to release local government bond quotas for 2020 early.

BBVA Bancomer and Industrias Peñoles sold a combined $1.8bn of bonds on Thursday to follow up Grupo Bimbo’s blow-out trade earlier in the week as investors found a sweet spot in high quality Mexican corporate debt.

Alpek, the petrochemicals business of Mexican conglomerate Grupo Alfa, could become the next company from the country to make the most of attractive market conditions as it looks to the bond market to refinance short-term bank debt maturities.