Citi

A fresh IPO launch broke the quiet in the pre-Easter European equity capital market this week: and a very unusual one — the first Romanian flotation of the year. Digi Communications, a leading telecoms and media group, wants to float 25% of its equity in Bucharest.

Orders for Saudi Arabia’s debut sukuk were over $17.5bn at the first official update on Tuesday afternoon.

Stellar funding conditions in emerging markets enabled Romania to print 10 and 18 year debt at record low yields on Monday.

The pace of borrowing has slackened for public sector borrowers as Easter approaches but a few are still out hunting for second quarter funding.

Issuers from the Gulf have taken over emerging markets bonds with Saudi Arabia on track to print its debut sukuk on Tuesday. Multiple tranche deals are the flavour of the week with Romania, Mubadala and KazmunayGas all offering multi-faceted deals.

Saudi Arabia was offering up a 20bp-25bp NIP over its conventional bonds at price talk for its debut sukuk on Tuesday, as banker’s debated where the deal will land relative to it’s conventional bond debut.

Korea Expressway Corp joined the flurry of bond launches in Asia on Tuesday, marketing a three year floating rate dollar note.

Bank of China launched its multi-currency, multi-tranche transaction on Tuesday morning, as Citic Securities also opened books for two tranches of dollar notes.

Oil India is returning to dollar bonds, launching a new 10 year offering on Tuesday morning, with the aim of paying off debt related to its 2016 Russian oilfield acquisitions.

Citi has appointed a new head of global capital management for EMEA and new co-heads of EMEA loans and has hired a new co-head of leveraged finance EMEA, as it reorganises its leveraged finance and loans businesses within the global asset managers group.

Shares in Gestamp Automoción and Banca Farmafactoring, which had performed poorly on their first day of trading after their IPOs on Friday April 7, steadied this week, providing relief to equity capital markets bankers anxious to avoid poorly performing deals putting off investors.

Telenor, the Norwegian telecoms company, has sold a 4% stake in Veon, the Russian telco formerly called VimpelCom, for $262.5m through a block trade.