Barclays

With equities in green, Thursday was a fair sailing day for corporate bond issues in Europe, and five issuers took advantage, including two French names and two Swedish. Demand was strong and terms tight.

UK banks jumped back into the bond market this week, enjoying good demand for their funding and capital products. But with the country’s financial institutions having loaded up heavily on debt already, and with political instability causing near constant volatility within the sector, some market participants wonder whether investors have had all the UK FIG bonds they can stand. Tyler Davies and Bill Thornhill report.

Iceland returned to the euro market on Thursday, bringing a €500m five year issue in its first outing since December 2017.

Three SSA borrowers issued a total of £200m ($255m) of medium-term notes in response to an inquiry for three year non-call one fixed rate sterling bonds on Tuesday — which probably all sold to the same buyer — amid an uptick of paper in the currency.

Irish Residential Properties REIT (Ires Reit) has bumped up the size of its bank facility to €600m, as the residential rental accommodation investor moves ahead with an acquisition.

Lloyds Banking Group found room to tighten pricing by 50bp for a new additional tier one (AT1) this week, though investors are having to second guess what a new prime minister in the UK might mean for the country’s approach to Brexit. At the same time Barclays added to its recent activity in the subordinated bond market, opening books on a tier two on Thursday.

Electrocomponents, an industrial and electronics distributor headquartered in London, has entered the US private placement market to refinance existing notes, according to sources in the market.

It took just over two hours on Wednesday morning for the IPO of Trainline, the UK transport booking website, to get covered after the company opened the books on its £630m IPO on the London Stock Exchange.

India’s Power Finance Corp sold a $1bn dual-tranche deal on Tuesday, its first offshore bond outing since its acquisition of REC at the end of March.

Barclays said on Monday that it has made Stephen Dainton permanent global head of markets, a position he took up on an interim business after a reorganisation of the investment bank in March.

Two Chinese property companies raised a combined $485m at the end of last week ahead of the holiday weekend in Hong Kong.

A managing director from Barclays' leveraged finance syndicate desk is leaving the bank.