Foreign exchange traders are eager to short the US dollar. The problem is the trade comes with a steep price tag.

Banks’ foreign exchange trading desks are off to their best start to a year since 2022 after a sharp reversal in the US dollar ignited market volatility and triggered a surge in client activity.

Citigroup has quietly removed diversity and equity requirements from its US$1trn sustainable finance target, as Wall Street firms continue to retreat from DEI initiatives amid political attacks.

Just two years after UBS took over Credit Suisse and set out plans to expand its investment bank by filling gaps in coverage in the United States, that strategy could be upended after Swiss regulators hardened capital requirements for the bank.

It was business as usual on Monday when the euro covered primary market reopened against a backdrop of escalating geopolitical crisis, proving the safe-haven value of this asset class from an investor viewpoint. 

Supportive technical conditions and a surprisingly benign market backdrop allowed FIG issuers to keep up the steady pace of euro issuance on Monday, while more issuers lined up sub-benchmark capital trades to follow. 

Open warfare in the Middle East failed to dampen the demand for investment-grade corporate euro credit on Monday, as two issuers at opposite ends of the IG ratings ladder both attracted books over €5bn.

The European Union's new syndication is heading into a remarkably calm market considering the escalating exchange of fire between Israel and Iran.

Mizuho has priced its first European CLO as sole arranger since rebooting its team with the hire of Hernan Quipildor three years ago. The deal was for Invesco, €403.3m in size, with a standard roughly 4.5-year reinvestment period and 1.5 years of call protection.

Guggenheim Partners is marketing Bilbao CLO V, its first European CLO since February 2022, via arranger Jefferies. The expected €406m deal has a proposed 4.5-year reinvestment period and 1.5-year non-call period.

Market participants attending the Global ABS conference in Barcelona were cautiously optimistic about the European Union’s upcoming new securitisation framework, although the process of implementing it is expected to be long and the devil will be in the detail.

The significant risk transfer market, which has been growing rapidly in Europe since the 2010s, is spreading into new regions such as Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, according to attendees at the Global ABS conference in Barcelona.

Overcoming challenging conditions for sub-Saharan Africa sovereigns in public bond markets, sub-investment-grade Togo has used credit enhancement from Lloyd's of London insurers and the African Development Bank’s concessional lending arm to raise 20-year funding.

A bill that requires companies operating in New York to disclose their carbon footprint has failed to progress through the state legislature this year, delaying its potential enactment until at least 2026.

The European Investment Bank flexed its status as one of the SSA market's best bid issuers and built a record order book for its new 10-year euro deal. It achieved the milestone despite the trade coming months after the year's typical period of peak liquidity in January and February.

The International Development Association, part of the World Bank Group, made its debut in the Swiss franc market on Tuesday, June 10 with a SFr255m (US$310m) seven-year sustainable development bond. The paper came in a SFr30m larger size and just 1bp back of the previous month's similarly styled deal from stablemate IBRD. 

Hong Kong-listed Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group is raising HK$7.85bn (US$1bn) from convertible bonds.

India's ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company plans to file for an IPO of around US$1bn as early as this month, people with knowledge of the transaction said. 

Nasdaq-listed Singapore ride-hailing and delivery company Grab Holdings has drawn strong demand for a US$1.5bn upsized convertible bond, as investors like the potential equity upside brought by a possible acquisition and the scarcity value of paper from a US-listed non-China Asian play. 

Chime Financial shares surged nearly 40% on their US market debut on Thursday following above-range pricing of its US$864m Nasdaq IPO, highlighting the current strength of the US new issue market. 

Sponsors in Europe are releveraging portfolio companies at record levels through dividend recaps, as they squeeze money out of assets that are bogged down in a stalled M&A market.

Loans backing the mergers and acquisitions or spinoff activity of investment-grade companies are gathering steam with more than US$26bn of bridge financings announced in the last week, after a lacklustre start to the year in which event-driven transactions were stymied by volatility linked to Washington trade policies.

The rapid appreciation of the Taiwanese dollar against the greenback in the past seven weeks is having an unexpected ripple effect on a part of the domestic loan market in Taiwan that was already reeling from regulatory tightening last year.

Companies are heading back to the US leveraged loan market to cut costs, some for the third time in 18 months, as volatility has subsided after issuance ground to a halt amid a US-led trade war.