Barclays

US real estate investment trust WP Carey issued a €500m eight year bond on Wednesday, continuing the 2014 trend of non-European companies selling bonds in the currency.

Jonathan Moulds, former EMEA president of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, will join Barclays as group chief operating officer, a newly created role.

Woori Bank opened books to its first dollar bond this year on Wednesday, January 14, as the South Korean lender was encouraged by the relatively successful outcomes of compatriot Export Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) earlier this week.

Virgin Media expects its leverage to remain within levels set by its parent company Liberty Global, after it raised a £925m-equivalent bond to finance a merger with another subsidiary, UPC Ireland.

Pirelli, the Italian tyre maker, has revved up the year's loan market business with a €1bn facility signed last week, that the company said was three times oversubscribed.

Book sizes for Tuesday’s offerings of senior fixed rate deals have fallen sharply, compared to the unusually swollen orders placed for new issues in recent days, but the market is still steaming ahead.

Export Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) staged a successful return to the international debt market on Monday, January 12, selling a SEC registered dual tranche deal that drew over $6bn of demand. Amid high levels of volatility seen since the start of the new year, bankers carefully chose a good window for the Korean issuer, who achieved both its size and pricing goals.

After the extraordinary fireworks of Santander’s €7.5bn block trade on Thursday January 8, the year’s more workaday business in European equity capital markets began in earnest on Monday, as five IPOs were launched.

Telecom Italia, Italy’s largest telecommunications operator, on Monday brought to the high yield market the first €1bn issue of the year, as part of a plan to repay slices of four other bonds.

Gecina, the French real estate investment trust, issued a €500m 10 year bond on Monday, attracting a vast order book and paying a small new issue premium.

A week before the European Central Bank is expected to announce a programme of quantitative easing and Greece elects its next president, investors are loading up on senior unsecured paper from top names in FIG, and being paid big new issue premiums. Investors are demanding more in part because of fears of volatility in coming weeks stemming from the ECB and Greece, bankers said.

Export Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) was back in the international debt market on January 12, opening books to a SEC-registered dual tranche benchmark transaction that is split between a five year and a 10 year.