North America

Standard & Poor’s cut Braskem Idesa’s credit rating from B+ to B on Friday, placing the rating on negative watch as the Mexican government’s termination of a gas transportation contract disrupted the polyethylene producer’s operations. The rating agency warned the company needs to address its gas supply shortage urgently, but some credit analysts eye a buying opportunity.

Flutter Entertainment, the parent of bookies Paddy Power and Betfair, has returned to the equity capital markets with a £1.1bn share sale to finance its acquisition of a stake in FanDuel Group, the New York-based fantasy sports and online casino company.

Dada Nexus, which operates on-demand retail and delivery platforms in China, raised $450m this week after selling a chunk of new equity.

The dollar bond market is wide open for companies to take advantage of strong demand and a rally in spreads, boosting hopes for a busy end to a record year for investment grade issuance.

Baker Bros Advisors, a shareholder in Chinese biopharmaceutical company BeiGene, has raised $340.1m from a sell-down of the firm’s American depositary shares.

A rotation into some cyclical stocks has lifted equity markets of late. But investor returns overall are still heavily reliant on a small basket of tech stocks with sky high valuations and any retreat from these names in a hurry could prompt a stock market rout.

The merger of S&P Global and IHS Markit, announced on Monday, will create a larger data provider for financial markets.

The Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, is adding a “negative screening” process to its purchases of corporate bonds under its quantitative easing programme, meaning it will no longer buy the bonds of the most polluting companies.

MUFG is overhauling personnel and its business model to try to escape a cycle of low returns, writes David Rothnie.

US corporate bond bankers predict a final flurry of issuance before year end, though there have been no deals this week ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, and after treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin moved to stop some quantitative easing.

More airlines are expected to issue new shares and convertible bonds over the coming months as the industry prepares for a recovery in 2021, spurred by the widespread availability of Covid-19 vaccines.

Stuart Taylor, who helped set up bond market data business Algomi, has joined MUFG's global markets business as head of electronic trading.