United States

The coronavirus will depress mergers and acquisitions activity, hurt advisory revenues and change the emphasis of deal-making in 2020, writes David Rothnie.

Spreads on financial institutions bonds are recovering from a brutal sell-off at the beginning of the week, as European governments and central banks weigh in to help economies deal with the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak.

Once again, corporate bond markets have staged a recovery after a shutdown of several days as asset prices plummeted in response to the growing coronavirus outbreak. Three industrial companies plus JP Morgan issued bonds in the US on Tuesday, which “all went exceptionally well” according to a head of syndicate in London. Danone launched on Wednesday the first euro corporate issue of the week, paying a high spread but small new issue premium.

Credit Suisse is set to move a financial institutions debt syndicate banker from his role in Europe to a position the US in the second quarter of 2020.

Bank of Montreal reopened the dollar market for Yankee banks this week, using ‘shadow books’ to quickly wrap up the sale of its floating-rate note.

Financial industry lobbyists have told the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that its proposed revisions to swap dealers’ and major swap participants’ capital requirements will have “a significant negative impact on the US swaps market”.

The US high grade bond market sprang back to life this week, as borrowers rode out a wave of volatility, helped by cash-rich investors and nimble pricing strategies.

Thierry Roland has been picked to lead HSBC’s new RWA Optimisation Unit, where the bank will put assets that do not meet its return requirement.

JP Morgan’s latest high-level reshuffle has put a crack team of dealmakers at the top of the firm, and opened room for new leaders to come up. But keeping senior bankers happy can be difficult, writes David Rothnie.

One of the derivatives industry’s largest annual conferences was cancelled on Tuesday, after the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus made the event unviable in the view of the organisers.

Equity capital markets bankers were celebrating a rare piece of good macroeconomic news on Wednesday morning: the surprise surge of former US vice-president Joe Biden in his bid to win the Democratic nomination to be presidential candidate in November’s election.

The US Federal Reserve’s emergency 50bp cut in interest rates on Tuesday failed to reassure markets. The US and European response to the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak needs to incorporate targeted fiscal policy as well.