The GlobalCapital Podcast

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◆ The inside track from the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings 
◆ AI's future economic impact and MDB capital debated 
◆ Middle East capital markets

This week the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings get underway, this year in Bangkok. Every three years this global finance and development jamboree meets away from Washington, DC with Thailand this year's destination.

GlobalCapital sent two of its best to the Thai capital to see what is being discussed inside and outside the conference as we published GlobalMarkets, our sister publication produced especially for the Meetings — and free to read for everybody.

On the podcast, we discuss the IMF's optimism about AI's future impact on productivity, the looming global jobs shortage, and a new tool for multilateral development banks designed to give them more financial firepower. 

Meanwhile, we take a read of what bankers and issuers from the bond market are thinking about in their own discussions in Bangkok, including how they are conducting business in the Middle East in the midst of the Iran war and what they are making of NatWest's recent decision to pull out of most of its primary dealerships.

Now read on:

IMF urges countries to squeeze deficits as debt costs mount
Contingent capital facility unveiled that could square MDB capital circle
Contingent capital will be measured against phalanx of MDB innovations

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◆ Credit market wakes up to France debt risks 
◆ NatWest resurrects primary dealership dilemma 
◆ IPOs are go but time running out

Credit markets are adapting to the growing pressure on French government bonds as the country grapples with its public finances. The signs are that OAT market pain is spilling over into other asset classes. We discuss just how far the pain will spread.

France isn't the only country with rising yields and borrowing needs, however. So NatWest Markets' decision to give up all of its primary dealerships except for the UK triggered much discussion about whether sovereign issuers are engaging in the right way with the banks that support their bond issuance. We discuss the costs of being a PD, and the cost to the issuer when its dealers quit.

Finally, plenty of initial public offerings are going through the market but there is a growing sense that issuers waiting in the wings are running out of time to come to market. We look ahead to the pipeline of deals.

Now read on:

Fear of OAT contagion spreads to credit markets
NatWest exit reignites primary dealership viability debate (free to read)
Too much of a good thing
Busy week of IPOs cannot hide slipping timelines

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◆ Issuers reconsider plans after bonds plunge 
◆ Argentina, Brazil and the bond market 
◆ Anticipating El Niño's impact on credit

Bond markets stumbled on Thursday, throwing into doubt issuers' plans for the weeks ahead. We examine what is happening and how it will affect he primary bond market in the weeks to come.

Meanwhile, in the run-up to the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok later this month, we looked at how the political situation in Argentina and Brazil are developing, what it means for their economies and how it might affect their bond market access.

Brazil has an imminent presidential election. The winner — either the incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro — faces the task of tackling the country's budget deficit. We discuss what investors have told us about their views on the possible outcomes.

There is no imminent election in Argentina, however, where president Javier Milei has been invoking economic reforms. Are the reforms going to be enough to hearld the return of one market's most notorious defaulters back to bond issuance?

Finally, we discuss the impact of El Niño. The weather phenomenon, which forms over the Pacific Ocean, can have far reaching consequences for the rest of the planet, and that may have ramifications for the bond market.

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◆ OAT rout puts French borrowers in awkward spot ◆ Sterling FRNs: a popular underdog ◆ Emerging market secondary bonds lose relevance

French government bonds got bodied by this week’s global sell-off, as France-specific fears spiked the already heady cocktail of alarms driving yields higher everywhere.

The OAT-Bund spread was knocked right off the pitch, to 113bp.

Unfortunate timing for French banks and companies, which were busy packing in all the funding they could before negotiations over next year’s national Budget begin in October — an event that has been glowing red on the risk events calendar all year. Too bad the risk came early.

Private sector issuers are still welcome in the market, though they are paying up a little over non-French names. But the louder political crisis gets — and it is sure to get very loud during next April’s presidential election — the more French borrowers will be emphasising to investors how much of their business activity is actually outside France.

A freakier result of this year’s weird rates patterns has been the flowering of sterling floating rate notes. This ancient instrument has been gathering dust at the back of the toolshed for years, but was rediscovered by supranational issuers last year and in 2026 is positively glamorous.

Two supranationals that had never issued an FRN linked to Sonia and one that hasn’t for seven years have brought deals in the past week.

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◆ Gulf private placements bite back ◆Price to issue bonds rises ◆ CLOs catch a break 

Gulf sovereigns and banks have raised billions with large, privately placed bonds since the US-Iran war began. Now the friendly, accommodating investors that bought them are starting to sell.

Gulf issuers were glad to raise cash quietly in these private deals and paid handsomely to do so. Now these bonds are causing them headaches. 

The issuers, especially banks, want to come back to the public market and raise fresh money. With their paper hardly scarce, it looks like they might have to pay up all over again.

For Europe’s bank and corporate issuers, spreads have been incredibly stable and tight, even as interest rates seesawed all over the place.

Now new issues are feeling the pinch a little. Over the last three weeks, there has been a decided increase in new issue premiums. We explore the drivers and whether it matters.

For years, CLOs have subsisted on a diet of yesterday’s mashed potatoes. Fresh leveraged loans were rare — instead they had to buy warmed-up repricings and refinancings of old deals. Equity returns have withered. 

At last, there is some good news for CLO managers — a raft of new loans is heading to market, including InPost and Nestlé Water.

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◆ The threat of US corporate issuance to European borrowers 

◆ The new funding environment for Middle East banks 

◆ Reviving UK equity capital markets

The plight of the red squirrel, native to the UK, is well known — pushed out by the chunkier, more vigorous grey variety imported from the US. Is there a parrallel with the European corporate bond market we wonder, given the vast amounts of US corporate bond issuance taking place this year in euros, sterling and Swiss francs?

US borrowers are set to push Reverse Yankee bond issuance to record volumes this year, causing a worry that their investor-friendly pricing approach will hurt the funding costs of Europe's domestic companies, or may even start to crowd them out of the market. We discuss the dynamics in the primary bond market and what the omens are for European credits with a hefty Reverse Yankee pipeline still to come to market this year.

Another group of issuers that might not be getting it all their own way in the bond market is MIddle East banks. Despite having issued little senior debt so far this year, thanks to the Iran war, the signs were when issuance resumed this week that demand was not overwhelmingly good. There is no sense that this group of issuers cannot raise capital in the bond market but the level of demand is very different to what it was. We look at why that is and what it means for the pipeline of bonds to come.

We also discuss UK equity capital markets. Participants have cheered some recent structural and regulatory changes but they do not seem to have been enough so far to trigger more initial public offerings. We discuss what the government and others need to do to make the UK's public equity market as vigourous as a grey squirrel.

Now read on: 

Gulf banks crowd into bond market to build safety buffers
Reverse Yankee onslaught casts shadow over booming corporate bonds
Don’t fear the Reverse Yankees (FREE TO READ)
'The elephant not in the room': timid UK equity investors

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◆ Solving order book attrition in the corporate bond market 

◆ Signs of trouble in the tech debt boom 

◆ The task before the EU's two newest chief regulators

The rate at which investors are dropping out of order books in Europe's corporate bond market when issuers tighten the pricing on their deals in syndication is rising. We examine why, what borrowers are doing to counter it and discuss just how important order book attrition is in the first place.

Meanwhile, there are signs that investors are tiring of the vast slugs of debt being pushed their way to finance the AI revolution. In the US commercial mortgage-backed securitization market, one particular deal is having a tougher time of it. We delve into it and just why debt buyers are growing more wary of data centre-backed securitizations.

Finally, we talk about the EU's two new incoming regulatory chiefs — Carlo Comporti, soon to be chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority, and Thomas Gstädtner, incoming executive director of the European Banking Authority — and the tasks that lie before them at a critical point in the development of the bloc's capital markets and banking industry. 

They will have to meet the challenge of helping to make the EU into a single capital market with banks big enough to compete against the biggest from the US, while bringing the bloc's fragmented system of national regulation along for the ride.

Now read on: 

Corporate issuers battle order book attrition in European market
Don’t fear attrition, watch the spread (FREE TO READ)
New Esma and EBA chiefs confirmed as regulatory battles loom
CMBS investors play hard to get for data center financing

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◆ Covered bond issuers take stock as pipeline threats loom 

◆ Caution creeps into FIG market 

◆ What triple-A ratings for Italian ABS mean for banks, securitization and the credit rating industry

The primary bond market has been characteristically busy for the last two weeks with issuers of all stripes trying to beat rivals to investors' cash ahead of what is expected to be a hectic September. For banks issuing bonds, this has meant competing on a number of fronts — in the covered bond market, the senior unsecured market and the subordinated debt market. But signs are emerging that investors are not willing to swallow any deal in any size at any price.

We examine what recent new issues in each of these markets tell us about issuance for the rest of the year and what issuers are up against both in terms of competing supply and wider threats to market stability. We also uncover how some issuers' recent experiences are already influencing how other borrowers approach the market.

Meanwhile, a securitization of Italian auto loans has secured a pair of triple-A credit ratings. Triple-A rated Italian credit risk feels very pre-2008 and certainly captured the attention of some of the older hands at GlobalCapital. We reveal who benefits from these ratings — both now and in the furture — and how they have come to be in the first place as we question why some rating agencies cap their ratings on ABS relative to the rating they assign the relevant sovereign whereas others do not.

Now read on:

Covered bond market seeks balance after frantic fortnight
FIG issuance 'wide open' but investors turning more sensitive and selective
Forza Itali-AAA: more top-rated Italian ABS to follow SG pace setter

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◆ Predictions for Gulf issuance change shape again 

◆ Investment grade firms to pick tricky path through autumn 

◆ The Alphabet effect: hyperscalers hit Kangaroo market

Middle East borrowers, especially the big sovereigns, have mostly kept away from the public bond market since the US-Iran war began at the end of February. There has been much anticipation that they will return in force in September, when primary bond markets are expected to become much busier. But will they show up? We examine the latest predictions and discuss how the market is changing for these issuers as the war rumbles on.

Investment grade corporate bond issuance in Europe resumed this week after a summer lull. We pick through the deals to see what they can tell us about the weeks ahead and also examine the calendar to find that the autumn issuance window might not be a particularly clear one, especially when factoring in the US mid-term elections in November and how that might influence hyperscaler issuance.

And speaking of hyperscalers, Alphabet made its Kangaroo bond debut this week. We inspect the imapct the issuer had with its blockbuster outing and what that meant for other Kangaroo issuers and the growth of the market.

Now read on:

Enthusiasm dims for Gulf primary market resurgence
Euro corporate bond market readies for issuance burst
Alphabet should build the Kangaroo market, not drain it

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◆ Have capital markets comprehended the heatwave? 

◆ Which SSA issuers need to get it done this autumn 

◆ Halcyon days for MTN, M&A and ECM bankers

Heatwaves and wildfires are dominating the news but the capital markets seem barely to have noticed. We discuss how the bond and securitization markets are thinking about the risks of global warming, whether they are worrying about it enough and whether anyone has figured out yet who will fund cliamte adaptation, resilience and mitigation.

Meanwhile, public benchmark bond issuance is awakening from its summer slumber. We examine the sovereign, supranational and agency bond market and the deals about to come. We discover there is one group of issuers in particular with funding to do and a limited window in which to do it.

We also identify two areas of invetsment banking where career prospects are on the up. We discuss the fashion for hiring experiened medium term note bankers, and their scarcity, and who in M&A and equity capital markets will likely be paying record bonuses this year. 

Now read on:

Markets bask in bullishness as record heat scorches harvests
Wildfires put securitization investors on notice of climate risk
Securitization investors can’t ignore physical climate risk (FREE TO READ)
SSA market braces for 'mini-January' as heavyweights line up
Pre-fund, especially if you're French (FREE TO READ)
MTN bankers: so hot right now
Record payouts beckon in M&A and ECM even as bankers hit beach