Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)

Czech firm EP Infrastructure has signed a €1.5bn syndicated loan that was subject to heavy scale-backs, after lenders offered the energy infrastructure company double the amount it was looking for.

HSBC has appointed Gareth Thomas as head of global banking for the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. He starts in the new job in September.

Bulgarian Energy Holding, the 100% government-owned Bulgarian electricity and gas holding company, has printed a €150m tap of the €400m 3.5% 2025s it sold in June.

Bulgarian Energy Holding, the 100% government-owned Bulgarian electricity and gas holding company, is returning to the bond markets for a tap of the €400m 3.5% 2015s it sold in June.The BEH tap will be only the third public Eurobond printed in the CEEMEA market this month — the other two were a Lietuvos Energija green bond in euros and an Angola tap in dollars.

An innovative liability management exercise by Czech Eurobond issuer Net4Gas is unlikely to be repeated in the near term due to limitations on the koruna corporate bond market, according to bankers on the deal.

A holding company owned by Dubai’s Oger Telecom has come to an agreement with all of its lending banks to give control of Turk Telekom to creditors, after months of restructuring talks on a $4.75bn loan.

The government of Slovenia has relaunched the reprivatisation of Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB), the biggest bank in the country, after an attempt to float it in 2017 failed.

As the trade tension deepens between the US and its counterparts, fund investors have fled to US bonds and equities, leaving emerging market fund outflows on the rise for the most part of 2018.

Frontier markets specialists Exotix Capital has made four new appointments to its EM sales business, expanding its coverage in four different geographies.

Akbank is due to send out invitation letters for its late summer one year syndicated loan by the end of this week, according to a source close to the Turkish lender.

Turkish banks are later than usual on their syndicated loan refinancing timetables amid political noise in the country, and loans bankers say it will soon be too late for the banks to roll the deals over, and they might instead have to take the unusual step of repaying the debt.

Turkey was driven further into financial instability and chaos this week, reflected in tumbling asset prices and the lira being at near record lows, after the country's president Recep Erdoğan delivered a further blow to investor confidence with a cabinet reshuffle.