To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com For structured finance deals using separate special purpose vehicles, credit is attributed to the relevant parent group of the originator of the underlying assets. An exception to the rule of rolling up to the parent level has been made for sovereign borrowers: agency, regional authority and state-owned co

For debt investors, this offered the promise of higher returns on their bond purchases – at least those denominated in US dollars. But Treasury yields, after spiking last summer, and again when QE tapering kicked in in December, settled down at a lower rate than many had expected. For market participants, this has meant another year where the hunt for yield grinds on. With cash-rich accounts seeking alternative strategies to optimise their returns, the knock-on effect has been to compress spread

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com Trafigura’s capital requirements include working capital and longer-term development financing. While the capital markets are available for short-term working capital requirements, commodity financing is traditionally the preserve of the bank markets. But as Trafigura has grown, so have its capital requir

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com If debt capital markets are on the verge of a major structural transformation, the evidence is unlikely to be seen in IFR’s list of the world’s Top 250 borrowers. What the tables show this year is that the world’s leading borrowers are broadly the same sophisticated set, many with programmatic borrowing n

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com A tug of war has emerged in the CLO markets as managers look to meet requirements aimed at reining in dicier parts of the securitisation market and keep themselves in business. The fear driving the market is the advent of the so-called risk-retention rule, which would require CLO managers to hold on to 5%

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com In May, the bank posted a 59% year-on-year rise in first-quarter 2014 profits to €712m (US$964m), increasing faith among investors that Italy’s economy and its financial services sector, crippled by the financial crisis, might now be on the mend. UniCredit chief executive Federico Ghizzoni told IFR in an

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com CITIC, the China state-owned conglomerate with businesses across the financial, real estate, manufacturing, telecoms and energy sectors, traces its roots to the early days of the country’s transformation from a command to a free-market economy, having been established by reformist leaders Deng Xiaoping an

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com There are advantages to Triple A status, even if it sometimes means that you are left in the corner at parties. Susan Love, deputy treasurer at Export Development Canada, speaks of attending an international conference several years ago and being taken aback at first that delegates appeared to show no int

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com Electricite de France Energy spent less than seven days in the debt markets last year, but the resulting deals showed real innovation. On November 20 2013, EDF became the first corporate to price a benchmark-sized Green bond, raising €1.4bn and attracting orders of €2.8bn. And then between January 13 and

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com Apocalypse movies always display mass panic the same way. Streets are either jammed with honking traffic or tumbleweed-empty. Madding crowds scour supermarket shelves for vacuum-packed food. No one has a clue what they are doing: how can you plan for the future when you’re not sure what it’s in it? Transl

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com Debt capital markets have become so used to the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy since the global financial crisis that when talk was first mooted in May last year of a pull-back in QE, markets took fright. Equities tumbled and primary debt markets shut. With a normalisation of Fed policy arguably priced in,

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com The pain of Portugal’s tearful exit at the semi-final stage of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest on May 6 was eased by a more triumphant and significant one later in the month when the country made a clean break from its €78bn bailout, joining Ireland as the second bailed-out peripheral European soverei

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com Whether the company is simply basking in the “second honeymoon” being enjoyed by dotcom or its enterprise value is justified is the big question as its IPO looms. Alibaba is an extraordinary cash cow. Its Ebitda last year was around the US$3bn-equivalent mark on the back of US$248bn of sales and its net i

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com The signal to the markets that the Latin American sovereign would be slightly different this year was the upgrade by Moody’s in early February. “The main driver of the upgrade is the approval of the government’s reform agenda, which the rating agency believes will have important implications for the count

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com Politicians and regulators have been at pains to insist that the relationship between sovereigns and banks has changed. Governments have made it clear they will not be stepping in to rescue banks in the future. Their words have been backed up by a host of regulations – such as bail-in and the massively increased

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com Some state-owned agencies at heart seem little more than a neat way for indebted sovereigns to move unwanted debt off their official balance sheets. CADES would agree. Its sole aim is to reduce public debt. But the French body’s activities are more than financial fudge. The debt transferred to it is not s

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com The financial crisis nearly caused the end for many of the banking names that pepper the high streets of Europe. Most survived in one shape or form, thanks to a bewildering array of bailouts, nationalisations, forced mergers, and radical rights issuances. Slowly, the worst of the financial crisis faded. E

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com After three long years of restructuring and reform at its corporate and investment bank, Credit Agricole seems to have finally turned a corner. While many of its bigger rivals posted some of the worst numbers for years in the first quarter, the French lender – now pared-back and leaner – had a strong Q1,

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com Securitisation, the cunning wheeze of wrapping up various types of assets and debts into packages that made millions for bankers in the last decade, but exacerbated the subprime mortgage crisis that fuelled the financial meltdown, seems to be back in favour as central bankers see that it still has an impo

To see the full digital edition of the IFR Top 250 Borrowers Report 2014, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com The policy initiative of Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe to revive the Japanese economy from its two decade-long stagnation and dubbed Abenomics had an immediate impact when it was launched soon after Abe assumed office in 2012. The yen underwent a sharp depreciation, exports picked up and Japan’s conso