The bank using AI to find M&A deals

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◆ Farewell, KommuneKredit ◆ Covered bonds advance on SSAs’ territory ◆ Ivory Coast makes funding breakthrough ◆ Romania’s risks

Genuinely useful applications of AI are still rare in capital markets, but UniCredit has come up with an intriguing one. It has built a tool called DealSync that is helping it generate M&A mandates.
The supranational, sovereign and agency bond market was shocked on Wednesday to learn that it would be losing a well known issuer, KommuneKredit. The Danish government has decided it will be cheaper to just issue bonds itself. Could other agencies disappear?
Covered bond spreads have been getting tighter and tighter, while SSA spreads are widening. Might covered bonds actually start pricing inside some of the best public sector issuers such as German states or Dutch agencies?
In emerging markets, heavy issuer Romania’s dual tranche bond this week went well, but there were telltale signs of the funding stress the country could face if it does not resolve its political difficulties and huge budget deficit.
Ivory Coast has a better story to tell — it has become only the second African country to issue an international bond in its domestic currency. This funding technique, widely used in Latin America and central Asia, holds out hope of reducing African countries’ need to borrow riskily in hard currency, exposing themselves to FX risk.