Wells Fargo Securities

Oil firms burst into the corporate bond market on Thursday with BP, Royal Dutch Shell and OMV opening books on multi-tranche trades, as comments from US president Donald Trump sent oil prices rocketing.

Hong Kong's AIA Group and China's Baidu reopened the Asian bond market this week, proving that investors are still willing to commit to the right credits ─ as long as they come at the right price. Morgan Davis reports.

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary capital markets activity. The North American corporate bond market funded a staggering record $194bn of investment grade issues in March while Europe has also been busy — shaking up the league tables and yielding a surprise windfall for the very largest investment banks.

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.

Bank of America signalled the last hurrah of post-earnings supply by Wall Street heavyweights when it hit the market on Monday with a $5bn bond.

Wells Fargo has reorganised its group structure, including hiving out its corporate and investment bank as a separate business line and giving it a new leader.

The Reverse Yankee market could be set for another strong year in 2020, with Wells Fargo adding last week to an already encouraging running supply total in the format.

Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs accounted for the lion’s share of dollar FIG supply this week as they led a return of senior unsecured issuance following a glut of preferred supply.

Records tumbled in the US bond market this week, as Bank of America and Toronto Dominion set new pricing records.

Wall Street heavyweights piled into the dollar market with a string of tightly-priced preferred share deals, after reporting full-year earnings this week amid FIG supply of $25bn in just four days.

The latest battle in the campaign to weaken corporate governance standards in the US is being fought over rule changes that would make it harder for investors to propose motions at shareholder meetings. The ‘proxy advisers’ so central to US governance also face new restrictions.

Robert "Bob" Fernandez, a veteran of EM debt capital markets, has joined Saudi Aramco's treasury.