What is Primary Market Monitor?

Primary Market Monitor is GlobalCapital’s tool for analysing syndicated benchmark bond issuance from SSA, FIG, corporate, emerging market and covered bond issuers.

We record the key details of each public benchmark in these markets, as well as link to our editorial coverage, allowing subscribers to filter the data to analyse results to suit their needs — be that working on deal pitches, or assessing where their own new issues might be priced.

Not only does PMM cover all the key information around each deal, such as size, lead managers, order book size and reoffer spread, but it also captures information around how it was executed. We record how big the order book was in relation to the deal size, how much the issuer and its syndicate tightened pricing during execution and, where available, the new issue premium the issuer paid.

What data goes in the PMM from each market?

To qualify for inclusion, deals can be new issues or taps of old bonds, but in all cases they must have more than one bookrunner and be of benchmark size, which will vary from market to market. Minimum sizes for consideration as a benchmark are as follows:

SSA

$500m

€500m

£250m

Corporates

€500m

£250m

Dollar deals not included.

Investment grade only, and hybrid capital. High yield deals (rated under BBB-) not included.

FIG

€500m

£250m

Dollar deals not included.

Exceptions to the requirement for deals to be syndicated can be made for self-led public benchmarks by major banks, and to the minimum size requirements for smaller issuers' public deals at the discretion of GlobalCapital. Public FIG deals include all bonds issued across the capital structure, and some may be rated sub-investment grade.

Covered Bonds

$500m

€500m

£250m

Emerging Markets

$300m or €300m for corporate and bank issuers

$500m or €500m for sovereign issuers

Sterling issuance considered on a case-by-case basis

New issue premiums

Where possible and appropriate we record what market participants on the deal calculate a bond’s new issue premium (NIP) to be. We also ask market participants away from the deal where they saw the NIP. We record these separately, taking an average of the estimates from different participants in each category. We then take an average of these scores to provide the GC NIP.

For example, if one lead manager says the NIP was 5bp and another says it was 7bp, the PMM data will show the New Issue Premium on the Deal as 6bp.

If a bank off the deal tells us it was 8bp and an investor tells us it was 10bp, we would record the New Issue Premium Away as 9bp.

The GC New Issue Premium would therefore be 7.5bp

League Tables

Every deal in the Primary Market Monitor database, and only those deals, are eligible for inclusion in our league tables.

For what is eligible for inclusion in the database, please see above.

The calculation of league table credit is simply the principal amount of the bond shared equally between the bookrunners. We do not consider co-lead roles or similar for league table credit.

In case of the FIG market, where banks can arrange their own deals, we allow users to include or exclude self-led issuance, to provide a more thorough analysis.

We consider a self-led deal one where the bank leading the trade acts as a sole global coordinator and/or bookrunner or invites other joint lead managers but gives them no control over the orderbook. For example, if Bank A uses its own securities arm A as bookrunner and adds Bank B, C and D as joint leads but with no books, the trade will be considered self-led and will not feature in the league tables when self-led deals are excluded from the totals.

Additionally, if a lead manager is affiliated to the issuer as a subsidiary, or through significant cross-shareholding, or the two are in a strategic partnership, its involvement will be considered to be part of a self-led arrangement.

We consider a significant shareholding to be an ownership stake at or above 20%. In such a case, the participating bookrunner’s league table credit will be removed when self-led deals are excluded from the totals but other banks in the syndicate will receive their standard credit but they will not receive the additional credit removed from arranger that is related to the issuer.

For example, if Bank A issues a €1bn bond and there are five lead managers with control over the book, but one of them is an affiliated party of the issuer, that one will not receive league table credit for the deal when self-led deals are excluded. The remaining four banks will each receive €200m of league table credit.

Below is the table which GlobalCapital has created for the purpose of analysing bookrunner-issuer relationships when deciding how to allocate league table credit. This information will be regularly updated with the league table credits updated only after an update of the table below.

Subscribers can easily see which deals have counted to a bookrunner’s league table position by clicking on the figure that appears in the Number of Deals column on the league table page of Primary Market Monitor.