Bank of America

Hotel Lotte Co has axed plans for a listing that could have raised W5.3tr ($4.5bn) after a raid by investigators on the offices of its parent proved one setback too many for the issuer.

Investors’ thirst for stock in Dassault Aviation, the maker of Mirage and Rafale fighter jets, was evident last March when Airbus sold €1.76bn of it in a block trade. It was clear again on Thursday night when Airbus launched a two-pronged monetisation of its entire remaining 23.6% stake.

L&T Technology Services has named Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JM Financial, Kotak Mahindra Capital and SBI Capital Markets as the lead banks on its planned IPO in India.

Investigators raided the offices of Lotte Group early Friday morning, one week after they did the same to its subsidiary Hotel Lotte Co, which is in the midst of trying to launch an IPO.

Block trade activity built steadily in intensity this week, reaching a crescendo on Thursday evening with a burst of deals including Airbus’s exit from Dassault Aviation. Also out on Thursday were Apax’s clean-up of Auto Trader shares and a block of shares in Spanish property company Colonial. Deutsche Bank was on almost every deal.

The response to some of this week’s dollar deals has got some bankers believing that next week’s US Federal Reserve meeting might not prove to be the market shutting millstone that it had promised to be just a few weeks ago.

Shares in Van Lanschot, the Dutch wealth management firm, jumped 5% on Thursday after it announced the pricing of its ‘re-IPO’ early in the morning.

Amid a hail of equity capital markets deals on Thursday evening, Airbus launched a €2.1bn sale of all its remaining shares in Dassault Aviation, using a €1bn exchangeable bond and block trade of about €800m. That came after Valeo had sold a $450m equity-neutral convertible earlier in the day, and as two other block trades were in the market.

Kommunalbanken on Thursday sold its largest floating rate note ever — and the largest floater from an SSA since early March — as bankers away from the trade said the “stars aligned” for the issuer.

Bank of Montreal (BMO) issued its debut dollar legislative covered bond on Thursday, achieving the tightest spread of any covered bond issued this year in the currency.

Cades more than doubled its minimum size target for a euro benchmark tap on Thursday, as the European Investment Bank also printed a large euro tap.

Nordic IT company Evry, 88% owned by Apax Partners, has tightened pricing on its €275m dividend recapitalisation term loan ‘B’.