CPPIB Capital is looking to take advantage of a red hot sterling bond market after hiring banks on Monday to prepare its debut trade in the currency.

KfW picked banks on Monday to lead the dollar market's first three year SSA deal of the year, while infrequent issuer Canada is looking to ride the recent wave of five year dollar supply after appointing banks to lead a new benchmark deal.

Caisse d’Amortissement de la Dette Sociale has a €4bn funding programme lined up for 2020, matching the total it raised in 2019.

An unusual note of optimism defines the attitude of Europe’s public sector issuers as they approach 2020. While many other markets are beset by fears of a slowdown in global growth, trade wars, and Brexit, SSA borrowers are confident in their borrowing strategies and loyal investor bases. Despite a change of face in the ECB’s top job, rates are still set to remain low for the foreseeable future. Accordingly, investors are having to grit their teeth to stomach the scanty yields on offer for euro SSA assets. Although SSAs are offering little in the way of yield, their place as pioneers of the evolving SRI market always ensures lively debate. In this roundtable, held in early November, market participants on both the buyside and the sell side favoured a more holistic assessment of issuers’ ESG profiles, rather than relying on labelled assets, but whether or not the ECB should take a role in promoting the SRI market through “green QE” divided the group.

US food group General Mills sold €200m of short dated notes on Wednesday, in its first sole-led deal since 2017.

Germany’s debt management office, the Finanzagentur, is confident its green bonds will be liquid when the first issue is launched in the second half of 2020 and has high hopes that they will trade tightly relative to ordinary Bunds. Its innovative plan to use a “twin bond” structure is designed to reassure investors and remove any doubt about liquidity.