Sri Lanka exploits brief calm to raise $1 billion

Markets have hardly been conducive to new debt issues recently, but Sri Lanka took advantage of a brief calm early yesterday morning to successfully price a $1 billion 10-year global bond.

Sri Lanka is used to dealing with bigger problems than volatile financial markets, and the once war-torn country’s ability to raise such a large amount of money at a competitive yield is testament to just how far it has come since the civil war ended in 2009 and contrasts sharply with the experience of its embattled European peers.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland were joint bookrunners for the...