Banks

The auction to determine the credit default swap payouts over the safeguard proceedings of Rallye was held on Thursday, and gave protection buyers an 87.5% payout. The supermarket holding company’s bonds had slid roughly five points in the week before, to trade at around 15 ahead of the auction, but settlement interest was all on one side, pushing the final price to 12.5.

Rates are low and keep getting lower, so investors are having to turn to higher yielding forms of debt to put their money to work and get a respectable return. Issuers, particularly in the Middle East, are happy to oblige as far as their regulatory capital needs will allow.

The European Union (EU) began its funding for the year on Wednesday, later than other public sector borrowers. With a €250m syndication to finance disbursements to Tunisia and Jordan as it adapts to a smaller borrowing programme.

Gatwick, London's second airport, offered a £300m no-grow 30 year bond into a quieter corporate bond market on Thursday, while Engie, the French power and gas group, issued a €500m non-call 5.75 year hybrid. This slowing of issuance from the frenetic pace earlier in the week was welcomed by bankers concerned investors might have been overtaxed.

TCS Group Holding, the Russian financial services company owned by founder Oleg Tinkoff, has completed a $300m primary capital raise by selling Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) on the London Stock Exchange, gathering a strong following from investors for the deal.

Can a bank ever really be certain about its interpretation of the perfect capital structure?

UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo printed €3bn of new debt this week, almost doubling the amount sold by Italian banks this month. Around €6.5bn of bonds have been sold in June, making it the largest amount of Italian bank bonds sold in a single month since early 2014.

Volkswagen has closed the books on the long-awaited spin-off of its truck division, Traton, at €27 a share, the bottom of the price range. It was a positive result for the company, according to sources speaking to GlobalCapital.

BNP Paribas Cardif raised Rp16.88bn ($243.81m) after hiving off a 2.5% stake in SBI Life Insurance.

Standard Chartered sailed into uncharted waters on Tuesday to make its Kangaroo debut. The bank issued A$1bn ($700m) across fixed and floating rate tranches, following Barclays' A$800m return to the currency last week.

Chinese online lender Qudian benefitted from active engagement with equity-linked investors to explain its business and growth potential to raise $300m from a popular convertible bond.

Gansu Provincial Highway Aviation Tourism Investment Group Co priced a $300m bond that was over eight times covered at its peak, in yet another busy week for issuance from Chinese local government financing vehicles (LGFVs).