Fed’s Easy Money Helps European Banks Refinance: Credit Markets

The Federal Reserve’s policies for stimulating the U.S. economy are allowing European banks to sell a record amount of dollar-denominated bonds to refinance about $1 trillion of debt maturing this year.

UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, and Barclays Plc led European financial borrowers in raising $43.8 billion of investment-grade bonds in the U.S. last month, beating the previous record of $42.4 billion last January, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The region’s lenders sold the equivalent of $52.8 billion of bonds in euros and pounds, half what they raised a year ago and making January the slowest start to a year since 2002.