Pre-migration untagged articles

The promotion of Jonathan Chenevix-Trench to become chairman of Morgan Stanley International in Europe was widely expected by the bookmakers.

The covered bond market proved itself more than up to the challenge of almost unprecedented issuance this week, as borrowers produced another Eu4bn of 10 year cédulas paper — Eu2bn of it as part of the largest ever covered bond.

Moody's gave Depfa a nasty surprise last Friday (December 2) when it put the senior unsecured ratings of its main units on review for possible downgrade.

Galaxy Casino became the first company from Macau to sell globally-distributed bonds with a blowout $600m dual tranche Reg 'S'/144A deal on Wednesday.

German agencies KfW and Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank, when revealing their funding plans for 2006 this week, stuck with the funding strategies that have stood them in good stead in 2005.

GM's hopes of finding a buyer wanting to take a majority stake in GMAC started to fade this week as two potential bidders signalled their disinterest and GMAC moved to further shrink its balance sheet. Within days of each other Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they were not on the shortlist of possible buyers. Wachovia Bank also indicated it had no interest.

General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) widened by 100bp this week to a high of around 570bp — the widest levels seen in the captive finance unit since General Motors (GM) announced its intention to sell it back in mid-October. This news stimulated a strong rally, and in October it was at the 200bp mark. GMAC has regained a lot of ground and later closed the week at around 510bp/530bp, while GM was at 20%/23% upfront.

Coca-Cola issued what is expected to be one of the last European corporate bonds of the year this week, and with little competition in the market the deal was well covered. The two tranche issue came on Wednesday from A2/A rated Coca-Cola Enterprises Investments Commandite SCA (Lux).