Wall Street dealmakers could be forgiven for thinking they were reading some regrettable AI hallucination when, on October 30, they looked at the US high-grade corporate bond league table and saw Morgan Stanley at the top, not JP Morgan.

Bank of America intends to lift its share of investment banking fees and grow its trading market share as part of a push to improve returns unveiled at its first investor day conference since 2011 – nearly the start of Brian Moynihan’s long tenure as chief executive. 

Another flurry of M&A deals on November 3 – the sixth "Merger Monday" this year when more than US$50bn of deals landed – lifted the value of announced deals so far this year to US$3.7trn, the second best year-to-date on record.

Ukraine’s latest round of restructuring talks with holders of its US$3.24bn GDP-linked warrants has ended without an agreement.

Alphabet raised about US$25bn last week via 14 tranches in two currencies, just days after Meta Platforms sold record-breaking corporate bonds in the US, underscoring the Silicon Valley tech giants’ increasing use of the high-grade bond market to fund their artificial intelligence aspirations.

Qatar achieved the tightest ever spread for a US dollar fixed-rate sukuk in its long-awaited return to the Islamic bond market on Monday after an absence of more than a decade. 

The two biggest themes in the euro corporate market converged last week when Verizon Communications and NextEra Energy became the first US corporates since 2021 to issue hybrids in the single currency.

Cipher Compute has become the latest bitcoin miner to tap the US high-yield market in a race to fund AI data centres using structures backed by cash-rich tech giants like Google, with another such deal expected in the coming months. 

European auto ABS supply and market conditions remain healthy, with investors continuing to absorb a variety of deals even as spreads have edged wider compared with September.  

ColCap’s second UK buy-to-let RMBS priced inside its debut trade, even as broader market spreads drift wider following a sustained run of post-September issuance.

Deals from Credit Acceptance, Exeter, Global Lending Services and Stellantis ensured that US subprime auto ABS supply resumed last week, following a one-week pause triggered by spread widening in the aftermath of Tricolor's bankruptcy in September.

Pepper Money, a regular issuer of RMBS and auto-backed ABS, is making its bow in the CMBS market with the indicative A$500m (US$326.5m) Pepper CMBS No 1, expected to launch from November 10.

Brazil could issue the first sovereign Amazonia bond after the Inter-American Development Bank closed the inaugural deal in the new format , which finances sustainable development projects across the environmentally critical Amazon region.

Demand for "debt pause clauses" could increase after it became clear just how vital they would have been for Jamaica as it struggles to recover from the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Melissa.

California is expected to finally begin sales of its US$10bn of climate resilience bonds in the first half of 2026, more than a year after the debt-raising plan was passed by local voters.

The International Capital Market Association released climate transition bond guidelines on Thursday, creating a new standalone transition label that will allow high-emitting issuers to raise sustainable finance.

Hong Kong’s red-hot IPO market is drawing interest from potential foreign issuers – from South-East Asia to the US.

Three lacklustre IPO listings do not bode well for the much-anticipated ECM recovery in South-East Asia. 

BillionToOne secured an upsized US$273.1m from its Nasdaq IPO on Wednesday, taking advantage of investor enthusiasm for its cancer diagnostic tests and benefitting from relaxed SEC rules designed to ease IPO execution during the government shutdown.

Voyager Technologies secured an upsized US$435m from the sale of a convertible bond issue, just five months after going public and by employing multiple equity derivatives to facilitate stock borrow.

Banks are casting a wide net for a multicurrency financing to back the record-breaking US$55bn buyout of video game maker Electronic Arts, which is set to include one of the largest LBO term loans in the last five years.

European leveraged finance bankers are gearing up for a final push before year-end as market sentiment stabilises, but the pipeline for buyout syndications this side of January appears to be running dry.

The US private credit industry has been rattled once again by a bankrupt borrower facing allegations of fraud, this time involving Bankim Brahmbhatt, owner of telecommunications companies Broadband Telecom and Bridgevoice and finance firm Carriox. Lenders are suing to recoup more than US$500m.

Nuclear power station Sizewell C has reached financial close after securing £5.5bn of bank loans, unlocking the funds for the full-scale construction of the £38bn 3.2GW power plant in Suffolk.