US investors shrugged off tensions with China last week as internet company Baidu printed a $950 million bond, which was multiple times oversubscribed.
Indeed, so confident were the leads on the SEC-registered deal Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and JP Morgan in the offshore appetite for the dual-tranche senior unsecured bond that it printed during China’s Golden Week holiday.
“The fact that Chinese investors may have been out on holidays was irrelevant,” said a banker close to the deal who pointed out that Baidu is followed by an emerging market, and increasingly, an investment-grade investor base across Europe and the US.
The...