It has been the most difficult year in living memory for finance. Less than twelve months ago, many bankers were still optimistic that they would arrive back at their desks for the New Year to be greeted by a newly resurgent market. How naïve that seems now. The change has been so dramatic that it has left CFOs’ heads spinning. And as the year marches towards its conclusion, a number of questions dominate peoples’ thoughts. How much longer must the markets endure this torrid punishment? And, jus

Raising new debt in the covered bond market over the past year has been far less simple than before the credit crisis. There was a time when vastly oversubscribed books were the norm, pricing often took place at the tight end of the proposed spread range and borrowers could access almost any maturity they needed. But despite the bear market for credit, covered bond supply has continued – at a price. Access to the market has been limited to the short end of the curve, and issuers have had to acce

Since July 2007, the international bond markets have had limited appetite for new Russian debt issuances. Although the first half of 2007 started very strongly, with issuances in the first seven months of 2007 almost exceeding the entire volume of issuances in 2006, the amount of issuances in the second half of 2007 was much lower. This year was slow to start, but by April issuances were back on a monthly level comparable to the first half of 2007. Although many of these 2008 issues were charact

The US$15.4bn total of G3 issuance from Asia (ex-Japan, ex-Australia) is a grim tally for the region’s struggling DCM bankers, who are desperately trying to justify their existence. This is the lowest total in five years, and pales in comparison to the US$51.5bn brought last year. But Asia’s domestic bond markets tell a different story. Some US$121.4bn-equivalent has printed in the year to date, with the region comfortably on track to beat last year’s US$140bn total. Moreover this outpaces by a

Every crisis has a turning point. The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy filing on September 15th was arguably the watershed moment in the current one. After attempts to sell the broker as a whole failed, Lehman Brothers was left with little option but to file for bankruptcy. It opened a Pandora's Box of counterparty risk and recovery rate suppositions, and turned the too-big-to-fail assumption on its head. Why was an assisted takeover handed out to Bear Stearns in March, while Lehman was left to fend f

In the short term, Argentina faces bigger financing problems than Venezuela. It is approaching the amortisation of US$23bn of debt next year and during 2010, while the latter can rely on its vast ‘petrodollars’. However, if the price of crude remains below US$100 per barrel for a sustained period, Venezuela may have to find external financing within two to three years. Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington DC-based thinktank, said: “Argentina is being forced to move

For more cyclical names further down the rating spectrum (mid/low Triple B), it may not be the high funding costs that provide the biggest hurdle for borrowers. Convincing selective investors to top up on this level of risk at all is a greater challenge, as recent events have made accounts even more cautious than before. This is reflected by the downbeat outlook for the corporate sector. Expectations are rife that the deteriorating macroeconomic backdrop will lead to recession, eating into corpo

Investors are behind the popularity of the front-end for debt issuance since the advent of the credit crunch: it is the natural preserve of the central banks which now make up much of the SSA investor base. Accordingly fund raising has focused much more on the short end than in previous years, accompanied by an almost total absence of issuance in the 10-year part of the curve. Consequently, the maturity profile of most issuers' outstanding debt has shortened, and their overall liability duration

Ramadan ensured Islamic markets were muted during September but, before the onset of the latest chapter in the banking crisis at least, syndication desks were confident that issuers would gear back up for the fourth quarter. "The post-Ramadan outlook for sukuk issuance looks healthy, with about US$20bn–$30bn in the pipeline globally and growing interest in the structure worldwide," according to Mohamed Damak, a Paris-based S&P analyst. Islamic financing as it is now known is only 25 years old, d