United States

The mighty dollar has lost its position as the default borrowing currency of the SSA market, and with a presidential election in 2020, that is unlikely to be reversed next year. However, that doesn’t mean that SSA borrowers can ignore it. Lewis McLellan reports

It was a year when the corporate bond market first had to get used to a world without QE — and then digest its return. Spreads tightened sharply after the summer following the ECB’s decision to restart its Corporate Sector Purchase Programme. But that did not mean all the best deals came after September. Far from it.

Battling against falling volume, the loan market also has to work out how to replace Libor. Loan market life will surely get more stressful as the clock ticks down to December 2021, when the rate is due to be phased out, although distractions might come in the form of sustainability-linked structures, writes Mariam Meskin

A rich variety of UK borrowers including a football club, two airports, the City and a clutch of FTSE 250 firms turned to US private placements in 2019. UK local authorities remained absent, but a surprise from the UK Treasury in October may be a game-changer

After assembling mega-funds that can commit loans of €1bn and more, direct lenders are gaining ground in leveraged finance at notable speed. Besides size, firms such as Alcentra, Ares, BlueBay and ICG offer borrowers privacy, speed, fixed terms and long-term commitment. But are they all equipped for the torrent of distressed situations the next downturn is likely to bring?

Lawyers in the US have had a busy 2019 drawing up tough documentation to protect borrowers and sponsors from CDS investors — net short activists — trying to get their say on the future of a company. With these provisions spreading to Europe, 2020 could be an even busier year

Five years after the US and EU slapped sanctions on Russia following its invasion of the Crimean peninsula, the country’s capital markets are doing far better than many expected. Mariam Meskin reports

US rate cuts were, admittedly, the driver behind the Latin American international bond market’s return to form in 2019. Although regional growth remains disappointing, there are encouraging technical and fundamental signs to be found

Markets go into 2020 fretting about a global recession and an escalation of tradetensions between the US and China, according to 25 heads of debt capital markets in the EMEA market, in Toby Fildes’ annual outlook survey. Respondents are mildly pessimistic on spreads and fees in the primary markets as well. But on the plus side, bankers are feeling hopeful about sustainability-themed bonds and almost unanimously believe issuance will top $270bn.

For corporate treasurers, the rates markets’ transition away from Libor and other Ibor benchmarks has created a messy future for their derivatives portfolios that many would prefer not to think about. Uncertain liquidity in new products and having to understand volatility in the new benchmarks are complicating the migration but there are signs of progress amid the confusion, writes Ross Lancaster.

Equities are at record highs, rates at record lows; the US is quarrelling, China is slowing. As 2020 begins, participants are divided on which way markets will move. Toby Fildes picks 10 themes

Since the global financial crisis, central banks have accumulated powers over regulation and supervision of markets as well as over monetary policy. In 2019 politicians began to erode that with interventions that have raised questions over who should control markets. By Phil Thornton