Banks

Finland’s Municipality Finance has sold its first bond linked to one of the new risk-free rates, opting for the Secured Overnight Financing Rate for its $200m floater.

France is preparing a 30 year OAT syndication, capitalising on a market that seems eager for paper that has snapped up an EFSF tap with an order book more than eight times subscribed.

Only HSBC and RBC Capital Markets are underwriting Fortress’s £9.5bn bid to take UK supermarket chain Morrisons private, while only Morgan Stanley is advising Apollo on its potential rival bid. This leaves plenty of scope for other banks to team up with sponsors to make rival offers.

Europe’s high grade corporations are lining up bond issues in euro and sterling for this week, which could be the last before the market slows down for a summer break. Meanwhile, analysts and investors agree that there is considerable room for borrowers to sharply ramp up primary market activity in the next session.

Three infrequent FIG borrowers are set to drop into a stable euro market this week, with Arion Bank, Banca Popolare di Sondrio and Westpac New Zealand all preparing senior deals .

The IPO of Al Yah Satellite Communications Co, the Abu Dhabi satellite company, is covered throughout the initial price range, on a 30% deal size, according to sources close to the deal.

LGT Bank, a private bank owned by the Princely House of Liechtenstein, priced its return to non-preferred format in under two hours on Monday, while managing to bump up the size and land inside fair value.

Teknos, a Finnish maker of paints and industrial coatings, strayed from the standard playbook when designing the key performance indicators for its first sustainability-linked bank loan, a €140m deal.

The Emirate of Sharjah is returning to the international bond market just months after its last visit, but this time marketing a sukuk that will place it among the ranks of major emerging market issuers — both sovereign and corporate — to have raised cash at competitive levels recently with the Sharia-compliant instrument.

Frank Drouet, who left Société Générale's global markets business in 2019 after 30 years, has landed a role at rival Crédit Agricole.

South Korea’s busy IPO market is continuing to pump out deals, with the latest listings coming from Kakao Pay and Covid-19 test maker SD Biosensor. But issuers still have to be realistic, as Krafton found out when it shot for, but missed, the country’s largest ever IPO.

Yunnan Provincial Energy Investment Group, a Chinese state-owned company, has returned to the loan market after three years for a sustainability-linked facility.