Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)

Ak Bars Bank has mandated Credit Suisse and UBS to arrange a Eurobond. If the deal goes ahead, it will be the first new issue from Russia this year.

Slovenia’s development bank, SID banka, has picked banks for a potential euro transaction five years after its last benchmark issue.

VTB has launched a multi-tranche tender offer for dollar, Australian dollar and Swiss francs bonds.

Metalloinvest’s $750m loan was no picnic for lending banks — the Russian miner self-arranged the deal and pushed hard on pricing — but this tenacious deal will not encourage a run of Russian deals soon, according to bankers.

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.