Banks

Poland has become the first CEEMEA country outside the eurozone to sell a bond with a negative yield since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Philip Hertlein resigned from his job as head of SSA syndicate and origination at LBBW on Tuesday. In his absence, the team has been bolstered by Oliver Franke, who joins the bank from Crédit Agricole.

Banks backing Cinven, KKR and Providence’s take-private of MasMovil have boosted the size of the euro loan tranche in the market this week by €500m, cutting down the planned bond that will fund the remainder of the deal, the first major LBO announced in Europe since the coronavirus crisis.

Uniqa Insurance has become the first European insurance company to take advantage of a change in the way in which S&P looks at capital quality, pricing a new short call tier two in euros on Thursday.

Syndicate bankers are scrambling to make sense of the covered bond market, where sentiment has been changeable in recent weeks. Amid volatility and small issuance windows, sustainable bonds have proven a safe strategy to ensure successful deals.

An Indonesian palm oil company has become the latest to fall victim to rising worries among loans bankers about government support. The company missed a payment last week, after bankers rejected an earlier covenant waiver request. Pan Yue reports.

Chinese social media platform Weibo Corp returned to the dollar market on Tuesday with a 10 year bond.

Exchangeable bonds are emerging as a key coronavirus tool for corporates — one they can use to monetise stakes in companies they own without having to concede large discounts by selling shares.

National Grid Electricity Transmission, the UK power transmission company, was out with a dual tranche trade on Thursday, including the first test of the conventional sterling benchmark market in more than a month.

The Republic of Indonesia returned to the yen market this week for its annual Samurai bond outing, raising ¥100bn ($930m).

Bayer, the German life sciences company, enjoyed blow-out demand for its €6bn multi-tranche bond issue on Wednesday, days after agreeing to pay up to $10.9bn to settle a lawsuit over claims its weedkiller, Roundup, causes cancer.

Barclays has appointed two new chairs of its leveraged finance and sponsors business, with Chris Turner relocating to New York to become chairman of global leveraged finance.