North American Corporate and Municipal CUSIP Request Volume Climbs in May

CUSIP Global Services(CGS) today announced the release of its CUSIP Issuance Trends Report forMay 2019. The report, which tracks the issuance of new security identifiers as an early indicator of debt and capital markets activity over the next quarter, found a noteworthy increase in requests for new North American corporate and municipal debt identifiers in May.

CUSIP identifier requests for the broad category of U.S.- andCanada-issued equity and debt, increased 3.9% between April and May. The increase was driven by an 8.9% increase in requests for U.S. corporate debt identifiers, a 0.4% increase in requests for U.S. corporate equity identifiers, and a 6.0% increase in requests for Canadian security identifiers. On a year-to-date basis, total volume for North American corporates was down 4.8%.

Municipal CUSIP requests increased for the fifth straight month in May. The aggregate total of all municipal securities – including municipal bonds, long-term and short-term notes, and commercial paper – saw a 41.4% increase versusApril 2019and a 9.2% increase on a year-to-date basis.

“Corporate and municipal issuers have been busy over the past few months, clearly taking advantage of the sustained low rate environment to raise new debt,” saidGerard Faulkner, Director of Operations for CUSIP Global Services. “While year-to-date CUSIP request volumes are still in negative territory for several asset classes due to a slower pace in Q1, the recent trend has been toward a significant increase in pre-market activity among North American issuers.”

Requests for new international debt and equity CUSIP International Numbers (CINS) were mixed in May. International equity CINS were down 21.9% versus the previous month, while international debt CINS increased 28.6% during the same period.

To view a copy of the full CUSIP Issuance Trends report, please clickhere.

Following is a breakdown of New CUSIP Identifier requests by asset class year-to-date, throughMay 2019: