Our winners from across the region.
Debt Capital Markets
Strong trade winds are blowing throughout Sub Saharan Africa. Pushing companies forward are rising oil and commodity prices, but throwing the continent’s businesses off course is a deterioration of trust after a spate of defaults and the end of cheap credit globally.
A new economic plan for Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest economy may hinge on whether the government is willing to bite the bullet on currency liberalisation.
Nigeria made a barn-storming return to the US dollar bond market when it defied expectations and shaky fundamentals to print below 8% yield on a book that almost hit US$8bn.
Romania placed its lowest yielding 10-year bond ever in early April, and the sovereign was rewarded for holding off from printing immediately after its mid-February budget.
Islamic finance volumes fell off a cliff last year, but bankers are predicting a substantial increase in activity as more sovereigns from major Islamic finance hubs are turning to the international markets.
Sovereigns in the Middle East and Africa need to diversify their funding sources to replace their lost commodity revenues, and some may turn to Islamic finance in 2017.
The banking system in Cyprus was plunged into chaos at the beginning of the decade, but heavy restructuring and aggressively tackling non-performing loans is helping lead the country’s lenders out of the wilderness.
