Banks

Harley Davidson made heavy weather of strong US bond market conditions on Thursday after a dovish Fed and a month-long rally in spreads appeared to set the dollar market up for a strong run of issuance in February.

Spanish telecoms company Telefónica on Monday launched the first green bond in euros from the telecoms sector. The firm, rated as one of Spain’s leading companies in the fight against climate change, published its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) framework in November but had to wait two months to sell its first green bond.

Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken followed Swedbank with a seven year deal, printing a well oversubscribed €1.25bn covered bond on Thursday flat to its curve. The deal comes as Citi research suggested excess demand for covered bonds issued this month is at a record level.

Bankers are confident that Oman can overcome the obstacles in the way of its borrowing capabilities, namely a large fiscal deficit and speculative grade ratings, in order to raise financing from international lenders.

Rating: A3/—/A+

Bankers and investors are expecting lower volumes of non-preferred senior issuance for 2019, with the majority of issuers looking at the asset class tending to be smaller and infrequent users of capital markets.

Bpifrance rode a wave of booming market sentiment following a dovish US Federal Reserve meeting on Thursday to sell its joint largest ever single issue, after originally aiming for a minimum size that was just a third of the amount it ended up printing.

State-owned Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom is embarking on a US roadshow with investors keen to take a look, ignoring any threat of possible further sanctions from the country.

Getty Images launched a refinancing of its capital structure on Thursday, the company’s first capital markets outing since the Getty family regained control of it last September. An investment vehicle controlled by conservative activists the Koch brothers was willing to commit $500m of preferred PIK equity last year, but the refi of the debt stack had to wait for market conditions to improve.

A quiet week for corporate bond issuance may have helped BMW Finance achieve tight pricing on Thursday, but selling its largest ever deal with new issue premiums in single digits was still an excellent outcome when compared to the premiums being paid at the start of the month.

The universities of Aberdeen and Leicester are marketing US private placements (US PP), it is understood, both of which willl be inaugural transactions.

Chinese automobile retailer Zhejiang Geely Holding Group has returned for a €1.4bn dual-tranche facility to refinance a bridge loan raised last year for its purchase of a share in Swedish truck maker AB Volvo.