When Chinese investors sought to secure a supply of niobium metal, UBS had the unique challenge of coordinating five state-owned enterprises to a punishing timetable, all the while taking on board the differing needs of each enterprise. 

It has taken nearly two years, but Indonesian mobile telecoms operator Axis has secured $1.2bn of sharia-compliant financing. For many of the players involved, it was their first dealing with sharia principles, presenting HSBC and its Saudi affiliate with a complex task.

The listing of Swiss commodity trading and mining group Glencore caused a few headaches for joint global coordinator Morgan Stanley. However, the impressive list of investors it helped secure shows that there is a big global appetite for commodities.

Issuing in Greece in the current climate is a brave move, but that did not stop telecoms company OTE entering the market earlier this year, thus posing quite a challenge for joint lead manager BNP Paribas.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch's European ECM team has had a strong start to 2011, built chiefly around its successful 'compressed bookbuild to refloat an asset' – or Cobra – for BC Partners' Turkish retail business.

Afren's high-yield bond issue earlier this year attracted interest from emerging market investors as well as specialist energy players, two investor groups who rarely overlap in the bond markets.

E.ON's recent liability management exercise shows that German companies can indeed successfully tender for outstanding debt, and may encourage others to follow. 

With all eyes on the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, the success of two consecutive offerings would be critical in underpinning the European response. The market's reaction to the issues from the European Financial Stability Mechanism and European Financial Stability Facility was conclusive.

The global interest in HSBC's recent IPO for Palestinian telecoms company Wataniya Mobile was not only a big success for the young telco, but also for Palestine in general, as it showed that the territory is a safe and potentially lucrative destination for capital markets.

New-found political stability is setting the stage for global investor interest in many African countries, and Standard Bank's debt capital markets team is leading the way. Writer Edward Russell-Walling