StrikeAndYield crib sheet · information and education only

Debt Capital Markets

Borrowing in public: a company or a government sells a bond to hundreds of investors in an afternoon, and does it again next year.

The desk — 9 transaction types

Investment-grade bond issue	Announced in the morning, priced in the afternoon. One number is negotiated all day: the spread.
Labelled bond issue	An ordinary bond with a label attached and a reporting promise behind it. The label attaches to a report, not to a payment.

Covered bond issue	A bond secured on a pool of loans that never leaves the bank's balance sheet. Two claims instead of one.
High-yield bond issue	Same market, different transaction: here the covenants are the deal, and the roadshow exists to explain them.
Liability management	An issuer buying back or exchanging its own bonds. Nobody has to accept, which is what separates it from a restructuring.
Note programme	A standing set of documents that lets an issuer sell a bond in an afternoon. It is why same-day execution exists.
Private placement	Notes sold to a handful of institutions directly. No public document, often no rating, and covenants closer to a loan than a bond.
Sovereign syndication	A government selling a bond through banks instead of at auction — used when an auction would be a leap in the dark.

A bond written to look partly like equity, so an agency will treat some of it as capital. Its whole life turns on a call the issuer need not honour.

The credit spread over the risk-free curve — The issuer's own cost, separated from the government's
The maturity wall — Debt has to be refinanced whether or not the market is friendly
Rating agency thresholds — A notch is a step change in the buyer base, not a small move in price
The reporting calendar — Issuance clusters into the windows when accounts are current
Index eligibility — Size, currency and maturity decide whether passive money can buy
The new-issue concession — The price of certainty, paid by the issuer

The morning announcement	The mandate, the structure and initial price thoughts go out together
Books open, an hour or two later	Orders arrive at a spread level, not at a price
Pricing, the same afternoon	The spread is fixed, allocations go out and the bond starts trading
Settlement, a few business days later	The money moves and the bond exists
The refinancing window, well before maturity	Most issuers replace a bond long before it is due

Counted from the same table each transaction page prints. Not a rating and not a ranking: there is deliberately no total.