North America

Dollar corporate bond issuers had to pick their windows carefully this week, as inflation worries and hawkish minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting hit new issue spreads.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s $1.25bn foray into the convertible bond market this week may be a sign of cryptos going mainstream. But the sight of such a borrower raising vanilla equity capital was not necessarily something to cheer about.

Angel Pond Holdings Corp, a special purpose acquisition company backed by Alibaba co-founder Simon Xie, has raised $250m from a New York Stock Exchange IPO.

Shares in Coinbase plunged more than 10% at the open on Wednesday after the US cryptocurrency exchange operator sold $1.25bn of convertible bonds and suffered a serious outage of its platform that stopped many users from trading.

CDP Financial, one of Canada's largest public pension asset managers, joined three other public sector borrowers in the dollar market on Tuesday to sell its debut green bond.

Chinese road freight company ForU Worldwide is planning a Nasdaq offering of American depositary shares (ADS). It is looking to raise at least $100m.

Artisan Acquisition Corp, a blank cheque company backed by Hong Kong tycoon Adrian Cheng, has tapped global investors for a $300m Nasdaq IPO.

Guarantor: Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board

Amazon grabbed headlines by pouncing opportunistically into the market and pricing an $18.5bn bond this week that included a record tight spread over Treasuries on a sustainability-labelled two year note, but the bigger story was inflation fears skewing the curve steeper.

In the film 'Annie Hall', Woody Allen recounts two diners’ experience at a restaurant. “One of them says: ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says: ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.’”

A rotation out of technology stocks and concerns about market capacity have taken some of the steam out of a booming convertible bond market.

Mexican food company Grupo Bimbo proceeded with a 30 year bond issue on Wednesday despite a US inflation reading that sent Treasury yields to their widest levels in a month. A strong bid from US investment grade buyers ensured a bumper order book, but some observers were surprised that the issuer had not delayed its deal in the face of a tricky market.