Bond

IFC Executive Vice President and CEO Jin-Yong Cai last week rang the opening bell on the London Stock Exchange to commemorate the Corporation’s first London-listed renminbi bonds.

ING Group announced today it will redeem the EUR 1.5 billion 8% ING Perpetual Hybrid Capital Securities per the call date of 18 April 2014, in line with ING’s goal to continuously optimize its capital structure and lower its funding costs.

Coming after its inaugural SEK 5-year Green Bond in floating rate format, AfDB took advantage of the strong positive momentum and demand created from the first deal to follow up with another SEK 1 billion 5-year transaction – this time in fixed rate format.

This bond issuance, with a 100-year maturity, is the first ever century-bond in sterling. The coupon stands at 6%, which is in line with the 100-year senior bond in dollars priced last Tuesday.

To those who have seen headlines over new record highs in equity markets or who mainly judge equity market valuations on the back of price-earnings or earnings yields it might sound strange to argue that equities are attractive...