Barclays

The US high grade bond market remained open for business through the market sell-off this week, underlining its resilience.

Rail travel will be the centrepiece of the Belgian government’s green bonds, the framework for which was revealed on Thursday morning at meetings in Brussels.

Despite heavy volatility in the equity markets, in fixed income, public sector bond issuers had an excellent week. A cool €10bn hit the market in tenors from five to 15 years and from all parts of the spectrum within the asset class. Lewis McLellan reports.

UK media company Entertainment One has tapped its outstanding 6.875% bonds due 2022 for £70m ($97.6m), as the company looks to snap up the remaining stake in the television studio Mark Gordon Company that it does not already own.

Qatar National Bank (QNB) has signed a $3.5bn loan with 21 international banks, with one of those also selling over $2.3bn of MTNs for the issuer, showing that banks’ jitters about supporting Qatari entities in the wake of the dispute between the sultanate and six other Arab states have partly been assuaged. Bianca Boorer and Virginia Furness report.

After being sidelined by volatility in the equity market this week, Greece made it to market on Thursday with a €3bn seven year.

United Utilities became the third UK corporate issuer to sell a sterling bond in 2018, when it printed a seven year deal 24 hours later than initially planned. The company held an investor call on Monday, but then paused for a day due to global markets' volatility, before launching the deal on Wednesday.

Italian high speed train operator Italo pulled its IPO on Wednesday night, the day before the syndicate was due to release a price range, of €1.5bn to €1.6bn, in order to take a €1.98bn offer from New-York based private equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners.

A plunge in global stock prices at the start of the week only closed the European investment grade corporate bond market for a day before Novartis attracted €6.5bn of combined demand for a triple tranche offering.

Global stock markets have suffered from volatility in recent trading sessions but European primary leveraged finance markets had already slowed down as investor pressure grew around a €1.4bn deal for storage firm Algeco Scotsman and the worrying performance of UK retailer New Look.

TalkTalk Telecom Group, the UK provider of telecoms and broadband services, raised £200m on Thursday from an intra-day capital increase after issuing a profit warning.

Israel Electric (IEC) shrugged off any concerns of contagion from the equity market rout earlier this week to print $1bn with no new issue premium on Wednesday.