THE World Bank and the Kingdom of Sweden took the markets by surprise this week when they launched benchmark 10 year dollar transactions -- with each drawing an overwhelmingly favourable response from the market. The conventional wisdom in the two months since the Asian currency crisis spilled over into the bond markets has been that only issuers with substantial funding left to do in 1997 would tap the public markets in size, as most investors remained on the sidelines.
December 12, 1997
