Historic ‘maple bond’ boom generating unprecedented business for Canadian capital markets partners — Law.com Historic ‘maple bond’ boom generating unprecedented business for Canadian capital markets partners — Law.com

Canadian capital markets are seeing an unprecedented surge in foreign borrowers issuing Canadian-dollar “maple” bonds. This increase has included record-breaking inaugural offerings by major AI hyperscalers such as Amazon and Google’s parent company Alphabet.

Osler has been a prominent legal advisor for large maple bond issuers, providing guidance on how to comply with Canadian securities laws on several offerings, including the Amazon and Alphabet deals, as well as IBM’s August return to the Canadian bond market, which marked its first issuance here since 2012.

Canada is currently regarded as an attractive economy for foreign bond issuers, despite being in the midst of an escalating trade war with the United States. “Issuers come to Canada when they can get equal or lower funding costs than they can in their home markets or other markets,” Rosalind Hunter, Co-Chair of Osler’s Capital Markets practice said. “That’s really a function of interest rates and yields and currency swap conditions being favorable when doing that kind of calculus on their borrowing costs.”

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