IFR

About IFR

IFR — International Financing Review — is the London-based capital markets news service of LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), covering bonds, loans and equity markets for the global investment banking community. The leading source of fixed income, capital markets and investment banking news and commentary, its team of market specialists reports on capital raising across asset classes, from rumour through to market reception, in real time online, on mobile and in print. Founded in 1974 as the Agefi Bondletter, it became what LSEG calls a bible for generations of investment bankers across half a century. It publishes from ifre.com.

Founding as the Agefi Bondletter

In the spring of 1974, Christian Hemain, the London correspondent of a French financial newspaper, signed his name at the bottom of a new journal, which he called the Agefi Bondletter. What it lacked in brand power — particularly among its bemused Anglo-Saxon readers — it more than made up for in content and style: the new publication reported on Eurobonds before they came to market, in great detail and with even greater accuracy.

The grassroots popularity of the newsletter was almost instant, and within a few years the newly independent journal had adopted the name that would become a mainstay of the global capital markets into the next century: IFR, the International Financing Review. The early editions were dictated onto an electric typewriter, signed, sealed and taken to the Continent in a Mercedes, reporting turnover on Euroclear in the region of $150 million — fifty years later, the figure would be nearer $20 trillion.

The secret: accuracy over sensation

LSEG's fiftieth-anniversary history of the title identifies its secret: not speculation or sensation, but consistency, accuracy and journalistic integrity. Despite the huge growth in size and complexity of the world's capital markets over five decades, the ethos and approach of IFR did not change: then as now, it provided detailed and trustworthy intelligence and information that investment bankers and other market participants relied on to structure, price and transact.

From the very start, IFR offered more than just news: its editorial commitment to accuracy meant that its reports constituted actionable insights. In markets where a mispriced bond or a mistimed launch costs millions, the reliability of the intelligence was the product.

Growth and the Thomson merger

As the Eurobond market grew into the global capital markets, IFR grew with it, expanding its coverage from bonds into loans, equities and the full range of capital raising. In October 1999 Thomson Trading Services and Thomson Financial Publishing Group merged Thomson Global Markets into International Financing Review, creating a $70 million capital markets, fixed income and foreign exchange business — a consolidation that reflected the increasing scale and data-intensity of capital markets intelligence.

The merger brought together IFR's journalistic franchise with Thomson's market-data operations, prefiguring the integrated news-and-data model that would define the title's later years.

Coverage across asset classes

IFR's team of market specialists reports on capital raising across asset classes. Its coverage spans bonds — corporate, investment-grade, high-yield, sovereigns, supranationals and agencies, financial institutions, emerging markets, across the Americas, EMEA and Asia — securitisation, ESG instruments including green bonds and loans and sustainability-linked bonds and loans, equities including IPOs and structured equity, loans, and rates and economics.

The reporting follows deals from rumour through to market reception: the mandate gossip, the pricing talk, the bookbuilding, the allocation and the aftermarket — the full lifecycle of a capital markets transaction, covered in real time. Special reports and roundtables provide expert thought leadership to a senior financial markets audience, while IFR's data and forecasting products supply the quantitative backbone.

The IFR Awards

The IFR Awards are the industry's most prestigious, celebrating excellence across global capital markets and recognising outstanding achievements in the investment banking community each year. The 2025 winners were announced on 17 December 2025, with trophies and certificates presented at the IFR Awards Dinner — widely regarded as the most prestigious gathering in the capital markets calendar — held on 9 March 2026 at Grosvenor House, London, and attended by senior investment banking professionals.

The dinner maintains a long-standing partnership with Save the Children through its traditional tombstone auction — the framed deal announcements that are the capital markets' folk art — which remains the charity's biggest annual fundraiser, having raised more than £33 million to date. The IFR Asia Awards extend the franchise to the region's markets: the 2025 roll of honour named UBS as Bank of the Year, DBS Group Holdings as Asian Bank of the Year, MTR Corporation as Issuer of the Year and HSBC as Bond House, among dozens of house, deal and issuer awards.

People and markets

IFR's ‘People & Markets’ coverage chronicles the investment banking industry itself: the hires, moves, promotions and strategy shifts of the banks whose deals fill its pages. In an industry where relationships and mandates are everything, the people coverage is as closely read as the deal reporting.

The title's journalists include specialist reporters such as ESG and sustainable financing reporters, reflecting the market's evolution: where the 1974 Bondletter covered Eurobonds, today's IFR covers green bonds, sustainability-linked loans and the ESG houses that structure them.

IFR and LSEG

IFR is now the capital markets news service of LSEG, available across the group's platforms including LSEG Workspace, alongside its real-time online, mobile and print editions. The combination places the title's journalism within one of the world's great financial markets infrastructures, serving more than 44,000 customers in over 170 countries.

Markets professionals worldwide rely on IFR's combination of commentary, analysis, data and forecasting for intelligence they can act on — the same proposition Christian Hemain offered in 1974, now delivered at the speed and scale of the modern markets.

IFR today

Fifty years after a French correspondent's Eurobond newsletter was carried to the Continent in a Mercedes, International Financing Review remains the capital markets' journal of record: the leading source of fixed income, capital markets and investment banking news and commentary, its awards the industry's most coveted, its dinner its grandest gathering, and its journalism the daily intelligence on which the world's investment bankers structure, price and transact.

From $150 million of Euroclear turnover to $20 trillion, from electric typewriter to LSEG Workspace, IFR's half-century is the story of the capital markets themselves — and of a journalistic ethos, consistency, accuracy and integrity, that outlasted every market cycle it covered.

IFR Asia

IFR's Asian franchise extends the title's capital markets authority to the world's most dynamic region. The IFR Asia Awards recognise the banks, issuers and deals shaping Asian capital markets: the 2018 Indonesia Capital Markets Deal award went to toll-road operator Jasa Marga for its Komodo Bond — the first global rupiah-denominated bond, a Rp4 trillion three-year issue launched in November 2017, rated Baa3 by Moody's and BB+ by S&P with a 7.50 per cent coupon — presented by IFR Asia's Steve Garton in Hong Kong.

The 2025 IFR Asia Awards roll of honour illustrates the market's current leadership: UBS as Bank of the Year, DBS Group Holdings as Asian Bank of the Year, MTR Corporation as Issuer of the Year, HSBC as Bond House, Deutsche Bank as High-Yield Bond House, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group as Loan House, Morgan Stanley as Equity House and Crédit Agricole CIB as ESG House, alongside deal awards from MTR's $3 billion hybrid to Alibaba's $3.2 billion convertible bond and Kaisa Group's $12.3 billion restructuring — the full panorama of Asian capital markets, judged by the title that has covered them for decades.