United States

The summer slowdown finally arrived in the US corporate bond market this week, with just a handful of issuers showing up before September's season truly begins — bringing what is expected to be a bumper crop of deals.

Market observers believe that investors in open-ended debt funds need to be disincentivised more than they are at present from scrambling to liquidate their holdings in a market downturn.

Japan’s Mizuho Financial Group came to the dollar market with a $2bn trade on Tuesday as it jumped ahead of the September funding rush.

September began with a bang for equity issuance, capped off on Wednesday by a mammoth €2.7bn share sale from Siemens Healthineers. However, the rush of deals is not just being driven by optimism. Bankers fear darker days returning.

Fast food franchise operator Yum China Holdings is cooking a multi-billion-dollar secondary offering in Hong Kong. It is the latest deal in a growing trend that bankers expect will bring more US-listed Chinese companies to the exchange by the the end of 2020, writes Jonathan Breen.

The top investment banks will achieve substantially higher returns on equity this year, predicts analytics firm Coalition, after revenues in fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) soared in the first half of the year.

Merck, the US pharmaceutical company, launched a chunky €1bn hybrid on Wednesday, as syndicate bankers said they expect even more subordinated corporate debt despite the flurry since returning from the summer break.

Chinese smart electric vehicle maker Nio has raised $1.5bn in fresh equity after increasing its follow-on offering of American Depository Shares (ADS).

This week in Keeping Tabs: the prospect of financial repression in the UK, an easier passage for emerging market central banks, and Alphabet partnering up with Swiss Re.

K12, the US provider of software for the online education of schoolchildren, has issued a $360m convertible bond, at the end of another busy month for US equity-linked debt issuance.

Chinese smart electric vehicle maker Nio has launched an accelerated follow-on offering, riding on the strong support seen for the US listings of its competitors in the past month.

The dollar corporate bond market skipped the summer slowdown this year. This week Royalty Pharma issued its first bond as a public company and pushed August's total issuance above $100bn for the first time ever.