Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)

Russia's Ministry of Finance has initiated legal action against Ukraine over the latter’s failure to repay a $3bn December 2015 Eurobond. It also claims that the default breaches the terms of the International Monetary Fund’s Extended Fund Facility.

Sovcomflot, Russia’s largest shipping company, has signed a $340m bilateral loan with Sberbank CIB. In previous years it regularly obtained syndicated loans from international banks.

Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) on Monday sold the second note from its EMTN programme, after drawing demand from asset managers.

Ukraine announced a moratorium on the $3bn bond held by Russia’s National Welfare Fund on Friday. The moratorium also covers Ukraine’s sovereign-guaranteed loans for Ukravtodor and Yuzhnoye.

In the last RMB round-up of 2015, HSBC became the first foreign bank to issue RMB-denominated CDs to corporates in China, Hungary plans RMB bonds in 2016 and Russian bank VTB saw a big boost to its RMB business in 2015. Plus, a recap of GlobalRMB’s top stories this week.

Good news from the US Federal Reserve — in the form of a more dovish rate announcement than some market participants had expected — brought a sanguine close to a turbulent week for credit derivatives and boosted equity markets, but only added to the pressure on emerging market countries and their currencies.

More cross-border RMB activities can be expected as the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has approved Rmb50bn ($774m) of RQFII quota to Thailand, and agreed with Russia to deepen bilateral financial co-operations, including facilitating the Russian government to issue Panda bond in China.

O2 Czech Republic has signed up to Ck12bn (€444m) of loans, of which it will use part to fund a share buyback programme.

Novorossiysk Grain Plant finally listed and started trading on the Moscow Exchange on Tuesday, after having delayed closing the deal for three weeks.

Russian steel company Evraz raised $750m from a bond that was printed tight to secondary levels on Thursday as it benefited from huge pent up demand for Russian corporate paper, even in a volatile market for metals and mining firms.

Europlan, the Russian car and truck leasing company, has completed its IPO on the Moscow Exchange, raising Rb3.27bn ($47m). Allocations were made on Thursday December 10.

Russian steel company Evraz has set the yield on a long five year benchmark at 8.25% area, a level that bankers away from the deal said was roughly in line with where he calculated fair value for the bond.