Anheuser-Busch InBev, which makes beers such as Stella Artois, Budweiser and Beck’s announced in June that it intended to buy out the half it didn’t own of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo for $20.1bn. Twelve days later, the brewery successfully issued a $7.5bn acquisition-linked bond, without even so much as a roadshow.

Brendan Hanley, a managing director in debt capital markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and one of the bankers on the deal, said it was the second-largest order book for financial or corporate investment grade debt that he had ever seen. He said: "We had orders of over $28bn from 480 investors, which gave us leverage over price. The company viewed this as an opportunistic capital raise, given the exceptional pricing available."