North America

The London Stock Exchange Group made its debut in the dollar bond market on Thursday as bankers welcomed a wave of deals related to a jump in mergers and acquisitions activity.

The Covid pandemic has delayed a lot of progress in the capital markets, but bankers say the industry is still on track to meet Libor transition deadlines. Investors have consented to the Bank of Nova Scotia transitioning the basis of its sterling covered bond from Libor to Sonia, while Westpac is seeking consent.

NatWest Group is looking to smarten up its capital structure by repurchasing up to $6.7bn of its subordinated debt from investors, including two legacy instruments. The offer arrives a week ahead of a deadline for UK banks to submit official clean-up plans for their old-style securities.

Hong Kong-based Jeneration Acquisition Corp, a special purpose acquisition company (Spac), is planning to raise $300m from a Nasdaq IPO.

Operadora de Servicios Mega, the Mexican leasing company, began investor calls on Tuesday as it looks to raise up to $150m via a re-opening of its only international bond.

Zhihu has kicked off the roadshow for its US listing. The Chinese company is aiming to raise up to $632.5m from the public market, and a further $250m from a handful of high-profile investors through private placements concurrent to the IPO.

In a move expected to add pressure to the already suffering long dated Treasury market, the Federal Reserve confirmed on Friday that US banks will once more have to include Treasury holdings in their leverage ratios from next month.

Tuya's shares soared nearly 20% on their debut in the US on Thursday, after the internet-of-things cloud platform provider raised $915.4m by pricing its IPO above the marketed range.

Several companies backed away from issuing dollar bonds on Thursday, after a dovish message by the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee on Wednesday failed to stem the rates sell-off. But Toyota Motor trusted that the market would be resilient and went ahead with its first industrial green bond.

National Bank of Canada’s €500m seven year covered bond issued on Thursday, showed that a positive spread to mid-swaps has a greater impact on demand than a positive yield.

The SSA market on Thursday was digesting the result of the previous night’s Federal Reserve meeting. Fed chair Jerome Powell took a dovish stance in spite of high economic growth, and some market participants believe that the strengthening inflation outlook could hurt demand for bonds at the long end of the curve.

A booming equity-linked market in the US is tempting a more diverse range of issuers to sell convertible bonds ahead of an expected economic rebound later this year, writes Aidan Gregory.