During the past five years, there has been a sustained revival of issues of fixed-rate sterling bonds by both British and overseas companies and overseas governments and their agencies. By contrast, British companies had raised only minimal amounts in the sterling bond market in the second half of the 1970s, and overseas borrowers had been virtually absent from this market for more than thirty-five years since exchange controls were first imposed in the United Kingdom. This article looks at why these categories of borrower should have returned to the sterling bond market in the early 1980s, and highlights developments in this market since then, in particular the increased use of eurobond issuing techniques and the associated growth of the sterling swaps market.
Recent developments in the corporate and bulldog sectors of the sterling bond market