Barclays

Oil company Shell printed a €1.75bn bond on Monday as it joined another three issuers printing almost €6bn of bonds in the European corporate investment grade market.

Biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca hit a frenzied corporate bond market on Monday with a €2.2bn three tranche bond that contributed to around €6bn of primary supply that day.

African Export-Import Bank has mandated six banks for a benchmark dollar bond roadshow that starts on Thursday.

Double-B rated issuers WEPA Hygieneprodukte, Europe’s leading privately owned tissue manufacturer, and Barry Callebaut, the Swiss chocolate producer, both followed Volvo’s lead in launching bonds on Monday, helping to keep a stuttering primary market active.

A weaker than expected set of non-farm payroll data last week did little to deter issuers on Monday as a pair of borrowers awarded mandates.

L-Bank printed a five year deal on Monday as the sterling market kept up solid momentum from last week.

Cision, the Chicago-headquartered cloud based PR firm, has launched a €250m term loan ‘B’ just over a week after launching a $1.1bn dollar tranche for its $850m acquisition of PR Newswire.

Barclays made a convincing start to its plan of reducing its stake in Barclays Africa on Wednesday night, with a successful block trade that netted $4bn of demand from what bankers on it said was a very high quality group of institutions.

Italy privately issued a long dated inflation linked bond and Spain drew strong demand at an auction of index linked paper this week, as bankers suggested interest could be returning to the asset class as investors bet on a return of inflation in the eurozone.

Philip Morris International this week printed the European corporate bond market’s fourth 20 year trade, with tight pricing, but despite an ECB guarantee to buy still longer dated paper supply looks set to stay subdued.

A consortium including Bob Diamond’s Atlas Merchant Capital is still pursuing a potential bid for Barclays Africa, even after Barclays sold a 12% stake in it in a block trade on Wednesday night, and a senior regulator said a private equity bid would not be welcome.

Barclays and BNP Paribas became the first European banks to tap the Yankee market for subordinated paper for almost a month this week.