Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)

The Republic of Zambia and Georgian firm Rustavi Azot kicked off roadshows this week, providing hope that a reopening of the CEEMEA sovereign and corporate markets — courtesy of Kazakhstan and Naspers — maintains momentum.

Ukrainian lender Privatbank failed in its first attempt to reprofile its 2016 bonds, which surprised some analysts. But not those inured to the numerous iterations of most Ukrainian restructuring exercises.

Ukrainian food producers are ramping up their push for internationally syndicated loans. One sunflower oil producer has signed a loan, another is in the market and a third food company has set its sights on a deal.

Belarusbank, the largest commercial bank in Belarus, has signed a €203m loan that one of its lenders said was the biggest ever in the Belarusian banking sector.

It's been a good week for Europe's renminbi ambitions with the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (Safe) extending a Rmb50bn RMB qualified foreign institutional investor (RQFII) quota to Hungary, while China Construction Bank (CCB) listed its RQFII ETF on Paris’ Euronext.

The Budapest branch of Bank of China was appointed by People's Bank of China as the official RMB clearing bank in the country on June 27, PBoC said in a statement.

Commerzbank has added to its credit trading capabilities in London by hiring an experienced structured credit specialist.

As an indirect beneficiary of the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing programme, Poland started 2015 with an extraordinary rally, culminating in the printing of a Swiss franc bond with a negative yield — the first ever for an emerging market borrower. More recently though, yields have backed up as the ECB rally has run out of steam.

Latvenergo, a state-owned Latvian electricity company, opened books on a sub-benchmark sized green bond on Wednesday morning — its first ever international bond deal and Latvia's first green bond.

Hungary is busy positioning itself as the first potential offshore renminbi hub in Central and Eastern Europe. Its central bank, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB), launched an RMB initiative earlier this year to push Budapest's credentials and Daniel Palotai, the bank's executive director for monetary policy, spoke to GlobalRMB about the bank’s plans.

Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) — the Hungarian central bank — is planning to buy RMB-denominated bonds for its official holdings.

A new narrative on Greece has emerged. Syriza, the country’s recently elected left-wing party, has for months been known across Europe and across capital markets exclusively for its anti-austerity views. Now, we are hearing something at once more surprising and more worrying: that Greece, under its new government, is beginning to side with Putin’s Russia.