North America

Blackstone announced its biggest acquisition for a decade this week, as it swooped on Thomson Reuters' data business for an enterprise value of $20bn. That left financiers waiting to see if it kick-starts a new round of big leveraged buyouts (LBOs) among private equity firms sitting on mountains of uninvested cash. Michael Turner and Victor Jimenez report.

IBM and Comcast hit the market on Thursday to get February off to a flying start after the quietest start to the year in the US corporate bond market since 2010.

Some of the wealthiest and most influential businesspeople in the Russian Federation received an expected, but still unpleasant, piece of news on Monday with the publication of a US Treasury Department list that is expected to precede new sanctions, write Sam Kerr and Bianca Boorer.

The investment grade corporate bond market started February with the second busiest day of 2018 so far, picking up after a relatively quiet January. Acea, Ford and Prosegur Cia de Seguridad, sold five tranches between them, including two floating rate notes (FRNs), on the first day of the new month.

The investment grade corporate bond market has started February with intent, with Thursday registering as the second busiest day of 2018 so far.

The first of China’s much-anticipated pipeline of technology-centric IPOs this year is starting to materialise.

Endeavour Mining, the Toronto-listed, UK-headquartered gold exploration company active in west Africa, has raised $300m to refinance debt with a debut five year convertible bond issue that was well subscribed, according to several sources close to the deal.

US private placement specialists are hoping the market will this year beat 2017’s record of 14 deals larger than $750m. They are playing up the ‘bells and whistles’ of the market – delayed draws, multiple currencies and varied tenors – to entice borrowers away from other funding sources.

Volatility on the S&P 500 has surged to its highest point since last August as the US blue-chip index briefly halted its climb upwards this week.

The London Stock Exchange’s Order book for Retail Bonds (ORB) opened the year with a $180m issue from Burford Capital, the litigation finance firm.

BOC International and Jefferies have announced an agreement to jointly provide investment banking advisory and capital markets services to clients, according to a Tuesday press release.

Entertainment One, the Canadian record label and entertainment company, has raised £53m, in an accelerated bookbuild, to partly finance its acquisition of the remaining shares in The Mark Gordon Company, the Hollywood production company behind films such as Saving Private Ryan, in which it already owns a 51% stake.