United States

Alliance Data Systems, the unrated US private label credit card and marketing services provider, is set to end meetings with European investors on Thursday for €300m of unsecured notes, its first euro issue.

Santander has completed an overhaul of its London loans team, with four new hires that it hopes will lead the bank to the forefront of Europe’s corporate finance business. The Spanish bank wants a bigger role in high level acquisition finance in western Europe and is also investing in CIB divisions in Asia, eastern Europe and the US.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) is joining forces with Environmental Financial Products, the company that once pushed for US industrials to trade carbon credits, in a bid to go after a new niche derivatives market: small community and regional banks.

Most futures traders in the US believe that the Federal Reserve will raise rates next month, but derivatives markets show few aftershocks priced in.

Simon Property Group, the US property company that is the world’s largest real estate investment trust, launched a benchmark seven year euro bond this morning, its first issue in the currency for over two years.

Ethypharm, the French pharmaceuticals company, has allocated €287.5m of new loan facilities at a wider margin than it initially proposed.

Halliburton jumped at the chance to wrap up its jumbo M&A financing, after the US Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen said that a rate rise in December was a ‘live possibility’.

This week’s landmark conviction in a Chicago court of a high frequency trader for ‘spoofing’ and commodities fraud has delivered a chilling statement of intent by US authorities to other suspects in the firing line and cranked up nervousness across the markets.

BorgWarner, the US car engine and drivetrain maker, furthered the return of reverse Yankee bonds to Europe's corporate market on Monday, by issuing a €500m seven year no-grow deal.

Plunging swap spreads, coupled with data releases and holidays in the US, are set to make dollar benchmark issuance difficult in all but the most defensive of tenors next week, public sector bankers have warned.

Bankers are expecting the Financial Stability Board (FSB) to loosen up its final total loss-absorbing capacity (TLAC) rule, set to be published on Monday, after the Federal Reserve published its own draft consultation of the rule last week.

A supranational issuer is understood to be mulling a visit to the belly of the dollar curve, but may have to pay up to do so as five year swap spreads have fallen into negative territory.