North America

Royal Bank of Canada boosted sentiment in the covered bond market on Thursday with a tightly priced €1.5bn seven year. At the same time Société Générale issued a defensively priced and well subscribed €750m five year.

Interest among Chinese companies to list in the US continues to remain strong, with personal finance company X Financial and internet firm Viomi setting the stage for their IPOs.

The CFTC has fined BNP Paribas $90m for allegedly attempting to manipulate the USA ISDAFIX benchmark, through messages that used Salt-N-Pepa lyrics such as, “Push it real good,” according to the CFTC order.

Moody’s dropped its unsolicited corporate and bond ratings for WeWork on Wednesday, blaming “insufficient or otherwise inadequate information”, with the office leasing company understood to be comfortable with the higher solicited ratings it has from S&P Global and Fitch.

After a plethora of small deals, the covered bond market look set for a proper test of appetite as Royal Bank of Canada prepares to issue a seven year euro denominated covered bond.

The US Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry has confirmed the nominations of Dawn DeBerry Stump and Dan Michael Berkovitz to serve as commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

China-based X Financial has set the ball rolling for a potential $250m listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

Viomi Technology, a partner of Chinese smartphone-to-internet company Xiaomi, is looking to float on the Nasdaq for up to $150m.

Chinese electric car maker Nio launched its US IPO, looking to pocket up to $1.3bn amid strong interest from investors for stocks in the sector.

No new high bonds emerged this week in the US market before the Labor Day holiday, with low volumes helping to keep prices firm and yields tight.

The amount of debt at the risky end of the US corporate bond market has tripled since the financial crisis, possibly putting pressure on the high yield market if downgrades start to climb, Fitch Ratings said last Friday.

ABN Amro took advantage of a stable background and quiet market conditions to re-open the Yankee bank market this week, with a $2bn trade that attracted more than $7bn in orders.