Goldman Sachs netted at least $30m in fees from the world’s largest corporate bond sale this week – a deal that gave another sign of the US bank's slow creep back to the upper end of the debt capital market rankings.

On Wednesday, Apple priced $17bn in debt, the largest non-financial corporate bond offering of all-time, beating Swiss healthcare firm Roche's $16.6bn offering in 2009, and the first time the iPhone maker has tapped the bond market in 17 years. It hired Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank to lead the deal.