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Indonesian high yield companies that had limited access to the international bond market this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic are now preparing for a challenging 2021 — unless sentiment gets a dramatic boost from the vaccine news. Morgan Davis reports.

Indonesia has made impressive use of the international bond markets to endure a volatile year. GlobalCapital finds out what the country is planning next.

State-owned enterprises have emerged as a critical agent for Indonesia’s government to spur economic growth during the pandemic. Their importance is only likely to rise in the future, writes Rashmi Kumar.

The Indonesian authorities have used nearly every trick in their fiscal and monetary policy playbook to kick-start an economy hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. The results are slowly showing, but there is an uphill battle ahead, writes Rashmi Kumar.

Foreign central bank action sparked arbitrage opportunities in Swiss francs to shrink in 2020, so investors took a more domestic approach. As foreign issuance dries up, so too do Swissie mandates for international desks. Frank Jackman reports.

The death knell has sounded for Libor and the ubiquitous benchmark is entering its last year of existence. But while some market segments have set their houses in order for the change, the loan market has barely begun. Europe’s bankers expect an onslaught of borrowers switching their documents to new rates at the same time. Mike Turner reports

The shock of coronavirus has changed markets — and society — forever. Toby Fildes picks out the key themes that will emerge from that upheaval in 2021. As 2020 has reminded everyone, the unexpected will happen — but markets can cope.

Transition bonds are likely to play a prominent role in labelled debt markets in 2021, after the market produced long-awaited guidance in December. As Jon Hay reports, the new market is bound to provoke disagreement — but it will be a creative conflict.

Governments have had little choice but to load up on debt to save their economies. With the crucial support of low interest rates and vast quantitative easing programmes, there is little immediate threat to debt sustainability. But as Jasper Cox reports, nothing lasts forever.

Public sector borrowing has been the backbone of the global economy’s response to the unprecedented economic and humanitarian disaster of Covid-19. Sovereigns, supranationals, agencies and regions rose to the new challenge, displaying more ingenuity and ambition than ever in their selection of market, format, currency and tenor and producing some truly spectacular deals. Borrowers throughout the SSA class had to adjust their funding programmes after the first quarter — many to double or even treble their requirements. Contending with inflated funding needs, as well as a market beset by severe dislocations, required unusual flexibility and creativity. Amid all that, SSA borrowers managed not simply to raise the sums required, but to push forward market attitudes to SRI debt and to new risk-free-rates products.

If central bank and government support was the scaffold that propped up the vast amount of funding done in lockdown, then long-held relationships between institutions — between people — were the bolts holding it together. The longer those in markets spend apart, writes Ralph Sinclair, the weaker those links will grow.

In the not so distant past, financial markets looked upon the dollar as the safe haven. But in 2020, the US currency’s very status as the default choice in times of trouble worked against it. Looking ahead, issuers may not be so keen to rely on it when times get tough. Lewis McLellan reports.