Traders at one London brokerage have been scouring the financial world in recent weeks for an asset almost untouchable for the past three years: Russian debt. They have been racing to find owners of dollar-denominated bonds issued by Gazprom to meet demand from Middle Eastern family offices.
They quickly found the Russian energy behemoth’s bondholders were either unwilling to sell or demanding significantly higher prices, according to two traders who spoke on condition that neither they nor the firm were identified because of the sensitivity of the transactions. This combination of limited supply and growing demand helped to drive down yields on dollar and euro-denominated Russian bonds by about five percentage points in February, one of the traders estimated.
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