Barclays

Swiss petrochemicals firm Ineos priced a €4.5bn-equivalent four tranche term facility refinancing at the tight end of guidance on Monday, taking advantage of a leveraged loan market where abundant demand and scarce new paper is grinding down margins and encouraging a wave of refinancings.

The prospect of a far-right leader becoming president of France rocked government bond markets this week. It led to a rare pulled French agency deal and will cause the country’s banks problems with their own huge funding needs. But as other issuers in eurozone countries facing elections showed, the picture of the risks ahead is complicated. Craig McGlashan reports.

A triumvirate of covered bond issuers from Denmark and Norway enjoyed stellar demand for their euro covered bond benchmarks this week.

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The dollar high grade market slowed to a subdued pace this week following the bonanza of the previous one as corporates with funding needs lined up their documentation after reporting earnings.

France’s Klepierre printed a €500m 10 year trade on Thursday, with bankers still waiting for a euro issuing corporate to take the step and stretch maturities in the currency further.

It took a trim of the offering size and issuer’s leverage ratio to sway high yield investors, but French glass packaging manufacturer Verallia finally priced its new bond on Thursday.

French bottle maker Verallia served on Wednesday an updated version of the offering it had to pull in October, when its shareholder Apollo disagreed over the terms with investors. The deal is now smaller, and the issuer less leveraged.

The IPO market in EMEA is enjoying mixed fortunes, with the successful completion of the largest flotation in Russia since 2014 and the withdrawal of the first German IPO of the year late on Tuesday due to a lack of demand at an acceptable price.

Criteria Caixa, the unlisted holding company, has sold a 5.3% stake in CaixaBank, the Spanish lender, for €1.06bn, through an accelerated bookbuild launched on Monday night that was completed without a covered message.

Two public sector borrowers had very contrasting fortunes with no-grow three year dollar bond issues on a volatile Tuesday.

Agence Française de Développement (AFD) has pulled a three year dollar deal that was expected to be priced today.