Borrowers want it all | Capital raising results tables
FREDERIC DESCLAUX IS complaining about hiccups. He hasn't got them. The debt markets have.
"The market has fantastic peaks," says SG CIB's joint head of fixed income and derivatives for Europe and Asia. "If you take the first full week in September, the Thursday was incredibly active. Then on Friday everybody was watching TV."
Sudden bursts of activity interrupting periods of stasis have characterized the debt markets this year. January and February were dominated by sovereign, supranational and agency borrowers; late August and September by financial institutions. Not much happened in between.
On the first day of last month, HSBC launched a lower tier two deal that was, at €2 billion, the largest such issue ever in Europe. The same week, ABN Amro launched a €2 billion senior FRN, and UniCredito Italiano priced a €500 million senior lower tier two issue. In September there were also €1 billion lower tier two issues from two comparatively rare issuers, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland.
"The market can't run at full tilt all the time, but this has been a particularly staccato year," says Mike Coppock, head of FIG DCM at Banc of America Securities.