Corporate finance: Blue chips strike funding gold

Once a risky debt investment compared with sovereigns and even banks, corporates are now the safe haven. They continue to access the euro bond markets even as sovereigns and banks struggle to fund. Large corporates are keen to reduce their reliance on bank funding and to widen their use of capital markets instruments to match-fund assets and reduce counterparty exposure to banks in the derivatives market. Debut corporate issuers are following their example.