United States

Utility issuers led the way in the dollar corporate bond market this week, before the trade dispute between the US and China slammed the brakes on supply ahead of the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

NN Bank entered the market on Thursday to seek €500m of senior funding, while Oberbank and Capital One are the latest names to announce plans to raise funding in the format in euros.

Bank of America is covering more clients than ever in a quest to overhaul its rivals at the summit of the league table rankings, spelling further bad news for European banks, writes David Rothnie.

Matthieu Pigasse has been appointed as global head of banking and deputy CEO of financial advisory at Lazard.

In this round up, China’s foreign minister talked to Mike Pompeo on Saturday, HiSilicon launched ‘extreme survival contingency plan’ and the Chinese central bank told reporters it would keep renminbi rate reasonable

In this round up, trade tension carried on intensifying as both sides rolled out more punitive moves, the People’s Bank of China and the Monetary Authority of Singapore signed a three year currency swap agreement and April’s industrial production and retail sales growth declined.

Luckin Coffee has raised $561m from its Nasdaq listing after boosting the size of the original American Depository Shares (ADS) offer and closing the deal a day early, according to a banker on the mandate.

Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), the US financial software company, honoured Europe’s bond markets this week with the lion’s share of the debt financing for its takeover of Worldpay, the payments group that began as part of Royal Bank of Scotland, for an enterprise value of $43bn.

The dollar corporate bond market showed its resilience this week as issuance rebounded, despite the US-China trade turmoil. “Trump, Trump, Trump,” was how one syndicate manager explained the reasons for the return of volatility as high grade credit markets see-sawed with the President’s mood swings.

HSBC led a surge in dollar bond supply as high-grade banks sprang back into issuance mode after a two-week layoff.

Europe's equity capital markets are heading for a crunch. Companies are set to launch a batch of IPOs so they price before investors disappear for the summer. But escalating trade tensions between China and the US threaten to rob them of their chance, writes Sam Kerr.

Equity investors who base their trading on the daily news flow emanating from the US and China, are going to have to accept the possibility that the relationship between the two countries will sour.