Kurdish bond opens new front in autonomy battle with Baghdad

Khalid Al Ansary, Isobel Finkel, and Caroline Alexander write for Bloomberg News:

An Iraqi official said the Kurds who govern the north of the country have no right to sell their own bonds, opening a new dispute between the Baghdad government and the breakaway region. The Kurdistan Regional Government says it has hired Goldman Sachs International and Deutsche Bank AG to gauge interest in a sale of dollar bonds, and meetings with international investors are scheduled this week. “How can they issue them? Who will guarantee them?” Muneer Mohammed Omran, director general of the central bank’s investor department in Baghdad, said by phone. “They’re not allowed to issue international bonds, this is a federal measure. Only the federal government can do that.”