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The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is pushing forward plans for its highly anticipated debut bond, which may arrive before the end of the summer. Senior SSA bankers say the AIIB will claim a seat at the summit with the rest of the top rated dollar based supranational borrowers in the public sector bond market, writes Burhan Khadbai.

Saudi Aramco might have expected a $12bn bond it issued on Tuesday to be hailed as a triumph, coming as it did well inside its sovereign curve after taking orders that at one point reached $100bn. But after pricing, the demand evaporated, the bonds fell below reoffer, and the notion that the European Market Abuse Regulation has ended the practice of order inflation was left in tatters.

The decision by the European Union and UK on Wednesday night to extend the country’s membership of the bloc until October 31 prolongs the uncertainty that is deterring UK companies from attempting IPOs.

CPI Property Group, a central and Eastern European specialist, raised €550m from a hybrid bond on Tuesday, but the debt slumped on Wednesday when a US hedge fund with which it has been fighting a legal battle filed a new $1bn lawsuit in New York. David Greenbaum, CPI’s CFO, told GlobalCapital the allegations were ridiculous and had been concocted in a deliberate attempt to disrupt the deal.

This week the US Federal Reserve side-stepped the question of whether it should apply new liquidity and capital rules to the US branches of foreign banks, publishing proposals that instead focused on tailoring requirements for their intermediate holding companies (IHCs).

Thames Water’s latest crop of holding company private placement debt issues contains language to protect investors from the effect of a Labour government — and particularly leader Jeremy Corbyn's vow to renationalise the water companies. Debt issued under the new documents features a ‘nationalisation event’ that would make it repayable immediately. Owen Sanderson and Silas Brown report.

Saudi Aramco’s hotly anticipated $12bn bond was priced yesterday with the fanfare investors had expected. Demand for the deal was so large that the sovereign rallied 20bp as the deal printed, but stated final orderbooks of $92bn are being questioned as two investors say only the 30 year tranche is still bid above re-offer. The leads disagree, though, with one saying he saw all the tranches above their pricing levels.

Yorkshire Building Society on Wednesday went to market with an inaugural sterling six year non-call five non-preferred deal after it said it would tender for its 2024 non-call 2019 tier two notes, opening a case for smaller institutions to decrease capital costs by replacing tier twos with senior non-preferred notes.

Alpha Bank Romania plans to issue the first covered bond from Romania under the country’s newly established legal framework.

Arrangers of Reliance Industries’ debut Schuldschein have sent investors a statement saying that demand “considerably exceeds the initial volume” target of €150m. The success of the transaction came as a surprise to some of the arrangers’ competitors, but is considered a good sign for the market.

Société Générale is looking at cutting around 1,600 jobs across the group, while also closing its over-the-counter (OTC) commodities business and proprietary trading firm.

Yorkshire Building Society is looking to buy back a series of tier twos before their first call date, after Coventry Building Society showed last month that the UK regulator was more relaxed than expected around what firms can do with their capital. But rather than replacing the bonds with an instrument of equal standing, Yorkshire is going one step further than its peer and proposing to issue its first non-preferred senior notes.