Bankia and BoI highlight Europe’s peripheral pull

Investors threw their weight behind Europe’s recovery this week, gorging themselves on just over €9bn of new euro-denominated senior unsecured paper, much of it from banks in the continent’s peripheral economies. The likes of Bankia and Bank of Ireland would have been called PIIGS two years ago, but this week the only thing they were wallowing in was orders — although ECB president Mario Draghi tried his best to keep the market’s rampant optimism in check on Thursday.