World Bank

The SSA market leapt into life this week with multiple benchmarks hitting screens. While the backdrop was supportive, the narrow pick-up offered over US Treasuries appeared to be stunting demand.

As the SSA market returns to life, two big name borrowers produced trades at the short end of the curve that underwhelmed some onlookers, prompting some syndicate bankers to speculate that there may be more fertile pastures further out the curve.

Public sector borrowers are mainly keeping to the short end of the dollar curve this week, but at least one top tier issuer is understood to be considering a 10 year dollar benchmark in the next few weeks.

World Bank will find out whether what has been a resilient market for public sector dollar issuance over the summer can support a jumbo trade, after mandating for what will be the first such deal in dollars from an SSA since the spring. Swedish Export Credit Corporation is also out in the currency, going ahead despite some geopolitical and US governmental turmoil over the last few days — and more issuers are lining up to follow.

Public sector borrowers are adding new flavours to the flurry of emerging market paper that has dominated flows in the medium-term note market throughout the summer, printing trades in currencies they only rarely access.

The summer MTN market has been dominated by niche currency issuance from supranationals.

Asian Development Bank added a A$60m ($47.7m) clip to its 15 year Australian dollar bond on Wednesday, as demand grows for Kangaroo paper beyond 10 years.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress supranationals have made in their funding programmes this year.

Inter-American Development Bank launched a debut 15 year Kangaroo bond on Monday, the third supranational to look for ultra-long Australian dollar funding in the last year.

SSA issuers are taking advantage of strong demand from Japanese retail investors in high yielding currencies to print a flurry of deals.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress supranationals have made in their funding programmes this year.

This week's GC BondMarker voters had only one benchmark to rate, but World Bank's $4bn three year would likely have shone in any company.