RBC Capital Markets

World Bank blew the doors off its first bond referenced to the Sonia benchmark on Thursday, setting a new record for non-UK sterling SSA supply in the process.

This week Royal Bank of Canada became the first bank to issue a senior bond complying with the country’s new bail-in regime. It paid a 10bp-12bp premium over the legacy senior curve.

World Bank is set to become the second supranational to issue a floating rate note referencing the Sonia benchmark, after mandating banks on Wednesday. The deal is expected to launch “as soon as Thursday” amid strong demand for the product from bank treasuries, according to one of the leads.

NRW.Bank nipped in ahead of this week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting to tap keen investor interest in dollars on Wednesday, pricing a deal that on-looking bankers said was flat to its curve.

When UK telecoms company Vodafone announced in May that it had agreed to buy some of US rival Liberty Global’s European operations, it said it would use existing cash, €3bn of mandatorily convertible bonds and new debt, including hybrid bonds to fund the €18.4bn acquisition. On Wednesday, Vodafone sold the hybrid bonds, using four different tenors in three currencies.

Canada should have thought twice before stripping banks of their ability to use senior debt as an ordinary funding tool.

NRW.Bank hit screens on Tuesday for its first dollar benchmark of the year, ahead of what will be a closely watched Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Wednesday.

Rating: Aaa/AAA

Nestle, Électrcité de France and BP have led a stampede to the dollar market ahead of an expected rate hike by the Federal Reserve next week, as credit markets shrugged off trade wars between the US and China.

Northern Ireland Electricity, the country’s electricity grid operator, overcame any fears investors may have had about the Irish border issue in the ongoing Brexit negotiations when it upsized its deal on a rare visit to the capital markets on Thursday.

French construction and concessions group Vinci sold its first public benchmark corporate bond deal in more than five years on Tuesday and was overwhelmed by both the quantity and quality of its order books for the dual tranche deal.

Public sector borrowers rushed into what is likely to be the last window for dollar issuance for a few weeks, removing some of the price tension they had enjoyed in what had been an undersupplied currency so far this year. That meant pricing correctly involved fine margins — although most deals made it through happily.