Banks

Portuguese insurance company Fidelidade is looking to sell a tier two bond this week, three years after first exploring the idea of issuing a subordinated debt instrument.

Santander and Barclays ended multi-year absences from the Swiss franc market to land a pair of senior deals flat to euros this week as funding diversification trumped arbitrage considerations.

Days after it sold a private placement, Mamoura Diversified Global Holding returned to the bond market on Thursday for a dollar dual trancher. The syndication will include a Formosa tranche.

Crédit Agricole issued a callable Samurai bond this week that will reset to a spread over the local government bond curve, as the yen market transitions away from Libor ahead of its cessation later this year.

French banks and foreign rivals are slugging it out in France’s corporate finance boom, where proximity to the government is an advantage, writes David Rothnie.

Nordic Capital, the Swedish private equity firm, has signed a sustainability-linked revolving credit facility, as ESG finance continues to make inroads into private equity.

European banks are trying to lock in funding at longer maturities as they consider whether credit spreads have reached a low point. But demand is less certain at the long end of the market, and some investors are pushing for a higher premium to reflect duration risk.

Kintor Pharmaceutical raised HK$1.17bn ($151m) on Wednesday from a top-up share placement, while a co-founder simultaneously trimmed his stake in the company.

The co-head of the EMEA debt capital markets centre at Bank of China in London has resigned.

Silicon wafer maker GlobalWafers raised $1bn this week from its debut in the equity-linked market, selling the largest convertible bond from a Taiwanese issuer in more than a decade.

Euroclear mistakenly credited investors with interest on one of UniCredit’s legacy capital deals this week, shortly after the Italian bank made a controversial decision to skip the coupon. The asset servicer is in the process of reversing its error.

Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Group, which tapped the loan market for a $7.2bn bridge loan last year to acquire retail giant Tesco’s Asia business, is now seeking covenant waivers on the fundraising. The move — which bankers say is triggered in part by CP’s plan to offload some of its newly-gained stake in Tesco — has hurt lenders’ confidence in the Thai conglomerate and raised questions around its strategy. Pan Yue reports.