Banks

Taiwanese printed circuit board manufacturer Zhen Ding Technology Holding has closed a $250m loan with three participants.

Commerzbank has long been recognised as a leader in the mid-cap loans segment, building on its decades of experience with the German Mittelstand to serve clients from dedicated hubs in Frankfurt, London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong.

Crédit Agricole CIB has long been one of the leading pioneers of sustainable finance. It was the only European bank involved in the creation of the Green Bond Principles in 2014 and has since led more green, social and sustainable bonds than any other investment bank.

While Turkish banks and corporates have ably endured periods of markets volatility in recent years, the impact of the pandemic last year presented a particularly tough test, one that threatened to disrupt the loan financing flows to the country.

In an extremely challenging year, Standard Chartered showed its strength and leadership in continuing to find liquidity for its clients in the African loans market, lead arranging financings for some 18 borrowers, almost three times as many as the bank’s nearest competitor.

A feature of many privately-transacted industries is that in the good times it is sometimes hard to know which firms are on top — it takes a crisis to find out.

The Schuldschein market might have had a disappointing year as the pandemic kept borrowers away, pushing issuance down to €19.5bn in 2020 from €27bn a year earlier. But for LBBW it was an opportunity to showcase its market know-how as an arranger.

Banks and investors’ claims to be acting on climate change appear to clash with the financing they still provide in the real economy, research showed this week — such as plans to increase fossil fuel production and consumption, even in the UK and France.

Look at any bank’s website or hear its CEO speak and you will get a torrent of virtuous words about climate change, sustainability and supporting clients on their journeys to net zero. The same goes for big investors, from BlackRock down, but the windows of their ivory towers are misted up with all the hot air being spouted.

Amount: Ba3/BB+/BB+

Dyal Capital, the US private equity firm that specialises in buying minority equity stakes in private equity and hedge fund managers, has employed a financing method — private placements securitized on fund cashflows — rarely seen before in its industry, writes Silas Brown.

Serbia and Croatia issued euro-denominated bonds this week. Market participants said the deals showed there was strong appetite for the right kind of sovereign credits.