Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)

The Czech Republic has proposed several legal amendments that will bring its existing covered bond regime into line with the European Banking Authority’s best practice guidelines and which, along with similar moves in Slovakia, will help catalyse new covered bond supply from the region.

Changes to the list of collateral eligible for repo with the Russian central bank could cause a spike in spreads on local currency bank bonds and push more lenders towards the international markets, analysts said this week.

Türk Eximbank’s second entry into the syndicated loan market this year has been a success, with 23 banks signing for $640m on Tuesday — more than double the initial size when the deal was launched in June.

Pricing on Akbank’s one year loan refinancing dipped by 10bp as political turmoil in Turkey appears to have died down since president Recep Erdoğan won a referendum to consolidate power in April.

United Biscuits, the maker of McVitie’s biscuits and Jacob's crackers, is to sign a £725m syndicated loan facility in the coming weeks to refinance a loan taken out in 2015 to fund its acquisition by Turkey’s Yıldız Holding.

Turkey’s Coca-Cola İçecek (CCI) is set to offer investors a rare chance to buy Turkish corporate debt, and has announced its intention to raise up to $1bn from the bond markets within the next year.

Turkey’s smaller financial institutions – Yapi Kredi Finansal Kiralama, the leasing arm of Yapi Kredi, and Alternatif Bank (Abank) – have come to the loan market with higher pricing than their bigger bank counterparts.

Bank Saint Petersburg, the Russian regional retail bank, has successfully priced a Rb3.2bn ($53m) equity capital increase, through a multi-day bookbuild that finished on Friday.

The renminbi’s usage as a global payment currency goes up, BlackRock says full bond index inclusion will drive capital inflows into Chinese fixed income, and foreign ownership of Chinese bonds and equities rise.

Promsvyazbank (PSB) priced an inaugural additional tier one (AT1) dollar deal at 8.75% on Wednesday morning after attracting more than $1.1bn of orders.

Odeabank took advantage of limited supply in the emerging market space to price a well-received Eurobond debut on Monday.

Markets reacted with apathy to the news that the US House of Representatives had voted on Tuesday to expand sanctions against Russia.