Pre-migration untagged articles

Confusion reigned in the corporate bond market this week after the trustees of bonds for UK retail and credit checking group GUS announced that its 2013 paper would be in default if a proposed de-merger of the company's two parts went ahead.

This week's EuroMTN market was dominated by small, tailor-made structured deals, and a smattering of exotic currency-linked transactions.

Cinven and Warburg Pincus, the private equity sponsors, won the bid to acquire the Netherlands' Essent Kabelcom yesterday (Thursday). They plan to merge the company with two other Dutch cable operators — Casema Holdings, which the consortium bought last month, and Multikabel, purchased in March.

In the North American markets, Ford Motor Credit widened sharply yesterday (Thursday) as it launched $2bn of new paper. It sold $1.25bn of new five year notes and also brought a $750m re-opening of a six year floater.

A Paris commercial court on Wednesday granted Eurotunnel, the Channel Tunnel operator, protection from its creditors under a French law called

Ford Motor Credit made what is now a rare appearance in the unsecured debt markets yesterday (Thursday) to raise $2.25bn, almost double its original size and attracting $8bn in demand.

With a set of scorching results to mark his succession to Sir John Bond (can we take a bet on Lord Bond as a near racing certainty?), Stephen Green must have enjoyed his debut on HSBC's centre stage.

The auto sector was once again the most active in the US CDS market in July, according to figures released this week by leading credit derivatives broker GFI. The five most active names in North America were GM, Ford Motor Credit, Ford, GMAC and American Axle and Manufacturing.

The results from HSBC were always expected to be good, but even competitors were impressed. The size of HSBC is almost overwhelming by non-American standards.

ast week we said that they would be dancing in the streets of Charlotte (NC) when the local Bank of America toppled Citigroup as the banking leader in terms of profitability or market value.

The Maple market reached a milestone in its development this week with its first tier one transaction. Crédit Agricole's C$400m perpetual non-call 10 trade, via Merrill Lynch, was also the sector's first deal from a French financial institution.