Austria

VIENNA PRIVATE DEBT ROUNDTABLE The Schuldschein market is widening its circle of issuers and investors. It is now a natural choice for Austrian companies wanting to complement bank funding, but not necessarily big enough to issue public bonds.

Rail Cargo Austria, the railway cargo subsidiary of Austrian railways operator ÖBB Holding, entered the Schuldschein market on Monday for a minimum of €100m.

OP Corporate Bank offered sold a senior non-preferred bond in euros on Wednesday, the whose success of which surprised market participants with its pricing and demand of more than three times the deal size. Oberbank also went to market with a senior preferred bond that did not attract as much demand.

BAWAG, SP Mortgage Bank and Tatra banka have all set their sights on the euro covered bond market, mandating for deals across the maturity spectrum.

A new section of the Schuldschein market is emerging, thanks to a virtuous circle. Property companies, until recently largely absent from the market, have begun to issue Schuldscheine, and these are attracting insurance companies, which rarely invest in the product because yields are too low.

Covered bond deals issued on Tuesday by the Swedish Covered Bond Corp (SCBC) and UniCredit Bank Austria were priced tightly but the market proved softer than recent sessions and price sensitivity limited the Swedish bank’s size ambitions.

A €335m sale of shares in Austrian bank Bawag was sold on Thursday night, the first equity capital markets transaction in the bank’s stock since its 2017 IPO.

NN Bank entered the market on Thursday to seek €500m of senior funding, while Oberbank and Capital One are the latest names to announce plans to raise funding in the format in euros.

Erste Group priced its inaugural non-preferred senior bond on Wednesday, meeting demand of more than more than four times the deal's €500m size.

UniCredit Bank AG (HVB) and Hypo Vorarlberg Bank AG are expected to open books on Tuesday for Pfandbriefe in the 15 and eight year tenors. The longer deal follows a series of other long-end trades and may be followed by more, as borrowers take advantage of remarkably strong market conditions to do their most difficult deals.

Santander UK, Sparebank 1 Boligkreditt (Spabol) and Erste Group were able to price flat or through their covered bond curves on Tuesday after stoking up hefty demand for their new issues.

In this round up, the Belt and Road Summit 2019 wrapped up on Saturday with numerous deals, monthly industrial profit increased sharply in March and China reported a small capital outflow.