North America

The US corporate bond market slowed to a trickle this week with just a handful of smaller deals as desks thinned out ahead of the Labor Day holiday.

At least $8bn in IPOs from Asian issuers could hit screens in September alone, if everything goes according to plan. But with investor sentiment still on the rocks despite the mid-year lull coming to a close, equity capital markets bankers are hoping for a swift end to what has been a summer of volatility. John Loh reports.

The US S&P 500 index hit a record high on Tuesday, which means that the US equity bull market had, by most standards, equalled the longest in history. Nevertheless primary equity market practitioners seem to retain a sense of gloom that the good times are about to end.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group on Wednesday said that it would launch two new interest rate futures referencing the sterling overnight index average (Sonia) on October 1.

The pipeline of Asian IPOs headed for the US is shaping up for September, with the latest crop of issuers all starting to drum up investor interest.

Major cryptocurrency exchanges Bittrex, Gemini, Bitstamp and bitFlyer have launched a working group to establish a self-regulatory organisation (SRO), potentially having large implications for the cryptocurrency spot and derivatives markets.

Tencent Holdings-backed Qutoutiao has filed draft documents for a Nasdaq IPO, with plans to raise up to $300m.

Chinese mobile internet company CooTek is planning a $100m IPO of American Depository Shares (ADS), according to a draft prospectus filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

Electronic trading platform provider Tradeweb is entering the US equity options market with a request-for-quote protocol that aims to capture growing investor taste for the product.

Elon Musk’s shock announcement on Twitter last week that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share rocked US financial markets and send its shares and bonds rallying. Yet one week on questions are being asked about Musk’s “funding secured” claim most notably from the SEC.

The US corporate bond market continued at a strong pace this week, ignoring the lure of the beach that sees its European counterparts' new issue flow slow to a standstill in August. More than $22bn of bonds were sold in the first three days of the week and around half of that was raised by United Technologies Corp.

The US Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has an unprecedented decision to make on whether to accept a reported offer from EN+ owner Oleg Deripaska to sell shares in the company to VTB Bank. The aim of the deal is to reduce the oligarch’s majority stake in the aluminium conglomerate, which, it is hoped, will result in sanctions against it being removed.