RBC Capital Markets

Public sector borrowers are finding healthy seams of sterling funding in various tenors, as Council of Europe Development Bank lined up to follow a Wednesday trade by KfW — and there are rumours that more supranationals could consider deals in the currency. Attractive arbitrage levels and large redemptions are helping drive supply and demand respectively, said bankers.

Tuesday’s £250m seven year bond issue from French oil company Total looked like a straightforward small benchmark sterling deal for a regular issuer. However, the marketing process for the deal marked a change from the normal approach and it is something investors are keen to see more of.

Monday’s combination of heightened worries over North Korea and the Labor Day holiday in the US saw only one new issue in the European corporate bond market. However, with no new developments from the Korean peninsula overnight, five issuers decided to push ahead with trades on Tuesday.

Europe’s IPO market gained two more deals of very different flavours on Tuesday when Rovio, the Finnish developer of the Angry Birds mobile phone game, and Charter Court Financial Services, the UK specialist mortgage lender, both filed intention to float documents.

Six corporate investment grade borrowers took home a combined $3.75bn as the US dollar market finally took a breather for the summer after the breakneck pace of issuance for the month so far.

Third quarter profits in Royal Bank of Canada’s capital markets business fell by 4% on Wednesday, a C$24m drop that the bank attributed to benign market conditions and low volatility.

Andrea Jelic, public sector DCM at HSBC, is set to move banks, GlobalCapital understands.

Canadian SEC-registered covered bond borrowers are expected to switch back to issuing under 144A/Reg S documentation after amendments to an existing regulation made SEC registration more onerous.

The dollar market got off to a busy start in August with US telecoms heavyweights Verizon and Comcast taking home a combined $5.5bn on the back of strong demand.

Gilt yields dropped on Thursday after the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-2 to hold the Bank Rate at 0.25% — a higher majority than the 5-3 in favour of holding at its last meeting in June. The more dovish result came after weeks of hawkish noises emanating from the central bank. Meanwhile, the Province of Alberta returned to the sterling market to tap its debut issue from earlier this year.

The summer MTN market has been dominated by niche currency issuance from supranationals.

Public sector issuers are taking advantage of strong summer conditions in the dollar market to bring green and arbitrage-style deals, with more issuance expected next week.