BNP Paribas

Corporate bond market participants show little sign of caring about the end of European quantitative easing and the danger that presents to their market — which has arguably been the sector most affected by the policy. Nigel Owen reports.

The visible deal pipeline of the European high yield bond market is expected to end the week empty, but the list of potential new borrowers keeps growing. Speciality paper manufacturer Fedrigoni is the latest.

BNP Paribas was in the market for its second non-preferred deal of the week on Thursday, ahead of what is expected to be a busy year for the asset class.

The dollar market is poised to get off to a flying start to the year in the Nordic region, which hosts all three of this week's scheduled dollar borrowers.

Economic conditions are ripe for the mergers and acquisitions that drive capital markets. Into this mix comes a potential US tax reform more radical than any for decades. This is bound to tilt boardroom decisions about strategy — if nothing else, US CEOs could suddenly have more cash back at HQ than they know what to do with. Jon Hay and Sam Kerr report.

Refresco’s $1.25bn acquisition of Cott’s drinks bottling business raises monopoly concerns, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said this week. But market sources see a quick fix ahead.

Ireland opened 2018 with a €4bn print deemed “spectacular” by a banker away from the deal, who said that it was priced flat to the sovereign’s curve.

Investment grade corporate bond market players only had to wait one day for the first new deals of 2018. Renault and BMW both brought new paper to market on Wednesday, selling a total of €2.75bn of bonds with little premium.

Non-US financial institutions have favoured going to the dollar market for unsecured offerings in the first two days of the year, with Crédit Agricole looking to raise tier two capital in the currency on Wednesday.

A plethora of covered bonds issued in the first week of 2018 met with strong investor demand reflecting the fact that buyers have considerable amounts of cash to put to work.

BNP Paribas opened the new year’s unsecured market on Tuesday with a seven year senior non-preferred deal in dollars, undeterred by a less attractive cross currency basis swap.

Dealogic could be one of the last leveraged loan deals to close in 2017. With allocations of its dividend recapitalisation loans due on Friday, the deal is likely to cap what has been an all-time record year of issuance in the European leveraged loan market.