BNP Paribas

Telefónica, the Spanish telecoms group with €55bn of debt, came to the euro market on Tuesday to refinance two of its hybrid capital bonds. It launched a tender offer for the pair, which now total €1.3bn, and a hybrid new issue to replace them, tacking on opportunistically a 10 year senior bond issue.

Achmea, the Dutch insurance holding company, has signed a €1bn sustainability-linked refinancing loan, in what one bank said was the first deal of its kind in the country's insurance sector.

Whether Vodafone’s £3.44bn issue of two and three year mandatorily convertible bonds on Tuesday this week ends up being judged a corporate finance success for the company may take time to discover. But it is already clear it was a great hit with investors — much more so than the first time Vodafone issued the structure in 2016.

Vodafone’s £3.4bn mandatorily convertible bond with share buyback language, sold to huge demand this week, may have created a new financial product. Certainly it will set off a maelstrom of analysis and pitching to clients, as banks seek other companies willing to try this daring structure. Jon Hay and Aidan Gregory report.

Markets have rallied in Europe and the US so far this year across equities and credit, but participants are feeling gloomy about the prospects for investment banks' revenues in the forthcoming first quarter results.

The root of arbitrage is the same thing being priced differently in two markets. As markets have got bigger and more sophisticated, arbitrage has become harder to find.

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Following the success of its first 10 year bond in almost a decade, Greece is looking to have a frequent presence in the debt capital markets. The sovereign may even return with either a tap or a new issue this year, even though it has met its minimum planned issuance of benchmark bonds for 2019 and has a significant cash buffer.

EMEA loans bankers are taking some positives from developments in the wider capital markets.

Pearson, the UK educational publisher, has signed a $1.2bn bank facility with a novel margin link to the company’s progress in educational reach, but loans bankers say that this increasingly popular form of funding is unlikely to drag the market out of its low volume melancholy.

Emirates NBD has picked banks for a bond in the additional tier one format, aiming to be the second such deal from a Middle East bank this year.

Bank of China paid a visit to the euro bond market on Wednesday, raising €500m through its Paris branch. It was just the latest Chinese financial institution to fund in the currency.