UK

Mark Carney has taken over two chair positions at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), just as he is due to step down from the Financial Stability Board (FSB).

Anglo-Dutch consumer goods company Unilever printed the fifth sterling corporate bond deal in three days on Monday. The £500m dual tranche deal offered investors seven and 12 year tenors.

Boutique trading firm Liquidity Finance has hired Michael Wheeler and Matthew Robbins, both formerly of BNP Paribas, to start a high yield bond trading operation in London.

A full €2.3bn of bond offerings from seven borrowers hit screens on Monday in the European high yield bond market, following last week's more than €3bn of new bonds despite fund inflows turning negative.

Euro corporate bond issuance returned on Friday after a blank day due to Thursday’s European Central Bank meeting. As the ECB’s president, Mario Draghi, said nothing to unsettle markets, US machinery maker John Deere and Italian oil and gas company Eni both priced deals in euros before the weekend, while Sweden's Akelius Property did the same in sterling.

MPs are preparing to scrutinise the Financial Conduct Authority’s proposal to create a new premium listing category for sovereign-controlled companies, due to fears that it could weaken corporate governance standards of UK-listed companies.

Rating: Aa3/A+

European Union member states are pushing back against the European Commission’s June 13 proposal on supervising clearing houses (CCPs), which could forcefully relocate systemically important institutions to within the EU, with questions of sovereignty and liquidity fragmentation arising.

Rating: Aa1/AA/AA

As the European Central Bank meeting suspended euro issuance on Thursday, British Land took the opportunity to grab UK investors’ attention with its first senior bond for 11 years. The £300m 12 year deal followed Tuesday’s £250m seven year transaction from Total, which had an order book of around £600m.

Nationwide Building Society came out of nowhere to tap its rare and very popular issue of core capital deferred shares (CCDS) this week, piquing the interest of a good many bank credit investors. Nearly every building society can get along nicely without this innovative substitute for equity, but Nationwide’s efforts to keep the product relevant could well make it a viable option for the rest of the mutual sector, writes Tyler Davies.

On Tuesday, pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline returned to the corporate bond market for the first time since November 2014, and its rarity value contributed to combined order books of over €5.5bn for the triple tranche deal.