Metinvest, Minerva take dollar deals on the road; market players eye FOMC meeting

By Rebecca Melvin

New York, March 20 – The Ukraine’s Metinvest BV announced on Tuesday it is taking a dual-tranche offering of dollar notes on the road starting on Wednesday, and Brazil’s Minerva SA is starting roadshow meetings on Wednesday for a planned perpetual offering. But, emerging markets overall were mostly quiet as market players hesitated ahead of the start of the two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, a London-based market source said.

Also joining the new issue calendar was Brazil’s Centrais Electricas de Sergipe (Celse), which plans to issue Brazilian real-denominated notes backed by Swiss Export Risk Insurance, with the electricity company selling the notes under Rule 144A and Regulation S via bookrunner Goldman Sachs.

There were a number of new deals in Asia and deals added to the calendar from India including natural resources company Vedanta Ltd., which plans to issue up to Rs. 45 billion of secured redeemable nonconvertible debentures, according to a release.

In secondary market trading, bond spreads remained somewhat mixed, with Egypt and Lebanon notably wider while Saudi Arabia’s sovereign notes were tighter in the Middle East & Africa region.

Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was meeting Tuesday with President Donald Trump at the White House, with the meeting expected to touch on Iran, Russia’s support to leaders in Iran and Syria and the division among Gulf Cooperation Countries over Qatar. Trump was expected to push for the need for unity in the Gulf region.

The FOMC meeting that wraps up on Wednesday was widely expected to include a lift of short-term rates by 25 basis points, and some expect the central bankers could lift their forecast for incremental rate increases to four rate increases from three for 2018.

This meeting marks the first time that the FOMC is meeting with newly appointed Fed chairman Jerome Powell at the helm, and investors will be watching how Fed commentary treats key topics such as inflation, the economy and trade policy.

U.S. Treasuries moved a little lower on Tuesday. The yield on the 10-year benchmark Treasury note settled at 2.881%, compared with 2.844% on Monday.

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