Hyper scalers’ borrowing binge shakes up foreign credit trading 

Flood of bond issu ance pushes up costs in Cana dian dol lars, Swiss francs and ster ling 

Financial Times UK 14 Aug 2026 EMILY HERBERT — LONDON MICHELLE CHAN — NEW YORK 

A flood of for eign cur rency bond issu ance by Big Tech groups is shak ing up the world’s smal ler credit mar kets, push ing bor row ing costs higher and caus ing local issuers to shift the tim ing of their deals, investors have said. Sil icon Val ley’s so-called hyper scalers, includ ing Amazon and Google par ent Alpha bet, have this year star ted issu ing debt in for eign cur ren cies includ ing the Swiss franc, Brit ish pound and Cana dian dol lar as they tap new fund ing sources in the race for AI dom in ance. The size of their deals has put the hyper scalers among the biggest issuers in those mar kets, in some cases crowding out other com pan ies, ana lysts said. Alpha bet raised C$8.5bn ($6.1bn) earlier this year, briefly the biggest ever bond issu ance in the Cana dian mar ket before Amazon issued C$14bn a few weeks later. Canada’s double A cor por ate credit index — the highest-qual ity cat egory, in which both hyper scalers sit — has weakened in recent weeks, tak ing its spread over gov ern ment bonds higher than that of the lower-qual ity A index. “[The hyper scalers] basic ally come in and reprice all of the high-qual ity curve,” said Souheir Asba, a credit port fo lio man ager at Alli ance Bern stein, speak ing about smal ler debt mar kets in gen eral. “You’re reset ting valu ations wider for other, sim il arly rated com pan ies.” Amazon and Alpha bet have also issued large deals in Swiss francs this year while Alpha bet sold a rare 100year bond in ster ling.

Some ana lysts warned that other com pan ies will be crowded out of longer-dated debt issu ance where the hyper scalers have focused their efforts. Hyper scaler issu ance in non-US mar kets “cer tainly will influ ence other cor por ate decisions . . . they can’t issue as much long-dated debt as they would like to”, said Steve Caprio, head of European and US credit strategy at Deutsche Bank. Caprio said the bank had an under weight call on European invest ment grade credit versus its US equi val ent, partly because of weaker growth and rising polit ical risks but also because of the expect a tion that hyper scaler issu ance in euros would cause spreads to widen — and “you don’t have as much of a nat ural buyer base for this paper” in euros com pared with US dol lars. “We wouldn’t want to be in longer-end euro invest ment grade credit at the moment because we know the hyper scalers are going to have to fund in every cur rency they can,” Caprio added. Ian Horn, a credit port fo lio man ager at Muzinich, said higher bor row ing costs for longer-dated debt in ster ling — par tic u larly com pared with short-dated debt — were “partly being driven by long-dated issu ance from the tech com pan ies across credit mar kets”. Oth ers said the price impact on other issuers had been rel at ively con tained because com pan ies were tim ing their deals to avoid the higher bor row ing costs asso ci ated with hyper scaler issu ance. Rob Lamb, head of European debt cap ital mar kets at RBC Cap ital Mar kets, said hyper scaler issu ance “is giv ing every body pause when it comes to the tim ing” of deals in smal ler mar kets. Lamb said hyper scalers’ quarterly earn ings had become a cal en dar event — like US payrolls data or cent ral bank decisions — in terms of the tim ing of debt issu ance, because of those com pan ies’ tend ency to sell bonds in the period fol low ing their res ults, includ ing in smal ler mar kets. “In the US and euro mar ket, we talk a lot to cli ents about coex ist ing with the hyper scalers . . . they are viewed almost as a dif fer ent asset class,” he said. Lamb added that, for groups try ing to issue in shal lower mar kets, “the chal lenge is: how much atten tion will I get if the hyper scalers are issu ing in size?” Manuel Gadient, head of debt cap ital mar kets and syn dic ate for Switzer land at UBS, said that, while hyper scaler issu ance in Swiss francs caused a widen ing of spreads at first, “it’s largely impacted pipeline and tim ing . . . rather than credit spreads more struc tur ally”.

Gadient added that he had not seen other com pan ies being forced to pay extra yield because of the hyper scaler sup ply in the Swiss mar ket but “that was largely because those [com pan ies] plan ning to come to the mar ket right there after decided to hold off, and come a week or two later”. The size of the deals also means that hyper scalers have quickly become a sig ni fic ant por tion of non-US credit mar kets. From zero pres ence until this year, Amazon and Alpha bet together now make up 7.7 per cent of the entire Swiss invest ment grade credit index, S&P data showed. This cre ated new risks for those mar kets and for investors obliged to track the com pos i tion of the bench mark, said Asba at Alli ance-Bern stein. “If there is a prob lem with any of those names, those smal ler mar kets will be much more affected [than the US mar ket]” because of the higher degree of con cen tra tion, she added. For some investors, the new issu ance brings a wel come vibrancy to less liquid mar kets. Al Cat ter mole, fixed income port fo lio man ager at Mira baud Asset Man age ment, said hyper scaler issu ance was “great” for investors because “it is adding diver si fic a tion, brings atten tion and keeps domestic cash in domestic bond mar kets”. Sim il arly, domestic investors have been crav ing tech expos ure in a Cana dian debt mar ket long dom in ated by banks and energy com pan ies, said Abeed Ramji, head of Cana dian debt cap ital mar kets at TD Secur it ies. Lamb at RBC Cap ital Mar kets added that the hyper scaler deals had shown that “there is sub stan tially more capa city than people were anti cip at ing in those smal ler mar kets . . . that’s been use ful to know”.