North America

Nueva Elektra del Milenio, the company that operates the retail store and money transfer businesses of Mexico’s Grupo Elektra, will begin virtual meetings with bond investors on Wednesday as it looks to sell a senior secured bond collateralised by remittance flows originated in the US.

Craig Meisner, the former head of loan markets for Lloyds Banking Group for North America, has landed a new job at ING Capital.

Cancelling debt, dual interest rates, helicopter money: if the recovery from the coronavirus crisis stalls in the developed world, we will see calls for more radical central bank action.

Political turmoil in the US led to the country's stock markets falling on the first trading day of 2021 on Monday. For Europe’s equity bankers the US markets are an important marker of global investor sentiment, meaning the next few days in US politics will determine what accelerated placements they can bring to market in Europe.

The New York Stock Exchange has dropped plans to delist the stocks of China Mobile, China Telecom Corp and China Unicom (Hong Kong).

Chinese clinical-stage company Gracell Biotechnologies has kicked off the roadshow for its Nasdaq listing, eyeing up to $158.9m in proceeds.

Mexico reopened the international bond market for EM borrowers on Monday by issuing the first Formosa bond from a Latin American sovereign in response to interest from Asian investors.

Mexico returned to familiar territory by becoming the first Latin American borrower of the year to issue bonds on Monday. The format, however, was less familiar, as the 50 year SEC-registered $3bn bond — launched at around 11am New York time — will be listed on the stock exchanges of both Luxembourg and Taipei.

Growth stocks are overvalued relative to value stocks, according to Ben Inker, head of asset allocation at GMO. But in fixed income markets he is less convinced of a bubble, with central banks compressing yields.

Canadian issuers are expected to concentrate on building their regulatory buffers in 2021 mainly with dollar senior issuance with bankers suggesting that analysts’ covered bond supply forecasts for next year, which are considerably above €10bn, are overly optimistic.

The US stimulus package seemed all but a done deal until Tuesday night. The $900bn, 5,593 page bill was passed by both houses and requires only President Donald Trump’s signature to become law. Though this seemed a foregone conclusion, Trump is threatening to withhold his signature unless the size of the relief is increased, not that bond markets seemed fazed by the late upset.

This week in Keeping Tabs: Republicans battle over Federal Reserve support, a look back at the "Spanish" flu, and a quiz from the Bank of England.