The Philippines under its recently elected president Rodrigo Duterte displays some uneasy contradictions. Against the backdrop of extra-judicial killing which has delivered more than 3,000 deaths since his inauguration, and a bomb blast last month that prompted him to declare a national state of lawlessness, credit and equity markets seem impervious. Can this last? Perhaps Rodrigo Duterte is the most colourful chief executive of any currently sitting government. He won power in the cluttered Phi

Loan market activity in the Gulf over the last 12 months has been dominated by jumbo sovereign loans. Including loans to government related entities, they have bolstered deal volume to around US$80bn so far this year, compared to US$100bn for the whole of 2015, according to data from Thomson Reuters LPC. In 2016, they include a US$10bn loan for The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a US$4bn five-year pre-export financing for Petroleum Development Oman (acting on behalf of the Sultanate of Oman) and a US$

Borrowers in the Gulf have printed US$33.25bn of deals since January 1, according to IFR data, and market watchers say there is plenty of juice left for the year. “There’s more to come,” said Abrar Hussain, head of DCM for the Middle East at Credit Agricole. “Sovereigns will need to keep borrowing money to fund their budget deficits and to build out a sovereign yield curve – taking it from the local market is cannibalising liquidity available for the domestic private sector.” The big one on the

The International Monetary Fund’s relationship with its major debtor Greece remains in an uncertain position, after a compromise was thrashed out in May to allow the second tranche, €10.3bn, of the country’s current bailout programme to be released. That money is only coming from Greece’s eurozone partners, via the European Stability Mechanism. Unlike in Greece’s two previous programmes, the IMF has not yet pledged loans as part of the current €86bn deal. “The programme has to walk on two legs.

Finance ministers and central bank governors of the world’s 20 biggest economies, at their last meeting in late July, called for “further analysis of the technicalities, opportunities, and challenges of state-contingent debt instruments, including GDP-linked bonds”. At that meeting in China, they also asked the International Monetary Fund, together with interested G20 members to report back on the issues to their group in 2017. Germany succeeds China as president of the G20 next year and may giv

Never was Mozambique’s fear of being left out in the cold by the international donors that fund a quarter of its budget more evident. On the first day of September, the president of the Southeast African nation, Filipe Nyusi, appointed a new central bank chief, replacing Ernesto Gove, whose second five-year term had just expired. Gove’s successor, Rogerio Lucas Zandamela, had all the right credentials. A lettered academic with a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, he had spent the pa

For lovers of Indian food, the term “masala” is evocative. It is a warm word that brings to mind the aromatic spice blend of peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and mace, among others, that are the basis for one of the world’s great cuisines. It was a no-brainer therefore, in 2014, for the International Finance Corporation, the investment arm of the World Bank, when it was looking for a name for rupee-denominated bonds issued to offshore buyers to call them “Masala bonds”. Although the market

While Dim Sum issuance is down on a year ago, with new issues of Rmb85.0bn (US$12.7bn) at September 1 lagging behind the pace of 2015’s full-year total of Rmb163bn, according to Thomson Reuters data, market participants expect that the offshore renminbi market will continue to fulfil a need for issuers and investors alike. As things stand, it is far easier and quicker for foreign issuers to sell Dim Sum bonds than it is to navigate the procedures required to access the onshore market. “The Dim S

China has been calling for the greater use of Special Drawing Rights as a way to challenge the hegemony of the US dollar, and officials are determined to introduce a functioning SDR bond market under its presidency of the G20 this year. Zhu Jun, director general of the international department at the People’s Bank of China said at the G20 meeting in Chengdu in late July that the first SDR bond from an international organisation would be issued in the PRC’s interbank bond market as early as the e

Speculation has been bubbling away since the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June that a glut of Russian corporate Eurobond deals would flood the markets, although the flow so far has been light. However, three names which could herald a pick-up in activity towards year-end are power utility company EuroChem, corporate O1 Properties and Russia’s largest privately owned bank, Otkritie. EuroChem was mentioned during the St. Petersburg forum as a possible Eurobond issuer following a spate of deals

The coup attempt in Turkey on July 15 failed to usurp the government but it did put the sovereign in the sights of the ratings agencies and froze the financing plans of the country’s banks. Moody’s is due to complete its review on Turkey’s Baa3 rating by mid-October, and that is a black cloud hanging over the country that could have a significant impact on its capital market plans. “Market expectations of a rating downgrade have come down … but are not going away, in my view,” Delphine Arrigi, p

For decades, Peru has striven to improve private investment in large infrastructure projects, and today – along with Chile and Mexico – it enjoys one of the most active public-private partnership markets in Latin America, underpinned by a strong PPP regulatory framework. Until now, the use of PPPs in Peru has largely been limited to highways, airports, railways, electricity projects, telecommunications projects, ports, and natural gas and oil projects. Of the 62 private concessions granted betwe

During the past year, Latin America’s move to more left-leaning regimes – the so-called ‘pink tide’ – has swung in the other direction. The biggest surprise took place on November 22 last year, when the former mayor of Argentine capital Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, was elected the country’s president (he is politically right of centre and represents the Cambiemos political coalition). He has already embarked on a series of market-friendly reforms, which are starting to turn Argentina into the ‘

In the first week of August, Mexico’s local currency debt was returning –4.53% in US dollar terms – the only country in the JP Morgan GBI-EM index without positive returns. The wider index, by contrast, was returning close to 15%. Investors and analysts said part of this underperformance could be explained by currency weakness: the Mexican peso has tumbled to record lows against the US dollar this year. Yet the reasons for the peso’s decline are harder to pin down. “Usually, Mexico trades as a b