North America

The drive launched by California treasurer John Chiang to promote a more vigorous municipal green bond market in the state comes as US local governments’ green bond issuance has dipped after early strong growth.

Elon Musk’s sensational claim to have funding in place to take Tesla private stunned the US capital markets this week, but the lack of substantive detail to the plan has largely reversed an initial rally in the firm’s equity and debt instruments, as well as reportedly drawing the attention of the Securities Exchange Commission. Aidan Gregory and David Bell report.

A pair of US sanctions against Russia could have potentially disastrous consequences for local and international bond investors, especially if a planned ban against the purchase of new sovereign debt takes effect, writes Lewis McLellan.

BMC Software was set to print $2bn of triple-C rated bonds this week, as it changes sponsor hands from Bain and Golden Gate to KKR. The new owner was also pushing for some of the loosest covenants in the market.

Each of the first three days of this week saw a jumbo bond deal in the US corporate bond market, but the volume of other deals dwindled as the week progressed, and Thursday struggled to achieve $1bn of issuance.

Elon Musk likes causing a stir on Twitter. Last year he announced his plans to avoid traffic in Los Angeles by digging large tunnels between his home and his office on the site. But the CEO might have dug an ever deeper hole for himself this week by tweeting that he was seeking to privatise Tesla at $420 a share with funding secured.

US financial firms, including Prudential Financial and Wells Fargo, raised plenty of funds and capital in the first half of the week. One of them, Discover Bank, could encourage other banks to use a callable structure when issuing tier two.

The Canadian province of Quebec has mandated four banks, including two international firms, to underwrite its first bond in China, a finance official at the provincial government told GlobalRMB.

Surprising exactly no one, big beast exchange ICE has joined its peers and entered the cryptocurrency market in earnest. More than eight months after competitors Cboe and CME launched cash-settled bitcoin futures contracts, this month ICE revealed Bakkt, a “global platform and ecosystem for digital assets”.

The Treasurer of California, John Chiang, rebuked President Trump for climate change denial on Tuesday as he committed the state to developing a "green bonds strategy" to develop the market and accelerate its growth.

Tesla’s only high yield bond traded at its highest level since mid-March on Tuesday, after CEO Elon Musk said he was considering a take-private deal that led investors to consider the bond’s attractive change of control provision.

After suffering the slowest month in a decade in July, the US high yield pipeline burst into life this week with two new deals on Tuesday and a further $5bn in the pipeline for the rest of the week.