Commerzbank

A chaotic start to the week for the euro corporate bond market saw one deal pulled on a combination of soured sentiment and aggressive pricing, causing issuers to engage in a balancing act before risk appetite returned in force at the end of the week.

Investors threw off the caution on Thursday that saw them hesitate over lower-rated investment grade corporate bond deals offering low spreads on earlier in the week.

Commerzbank confirmed on Thursday morning that it planned a new revamp of it’s strategy, dubbed Commerzbank 4.0, which would cut back further on trading activities, merge the investment bank with the Mittelstandbank, write off goodwill and intangibles, and axe its dividend.

The European Investment Bank has pushed the green bond curve out to the unprecedented length of 21 years with a new issue on Wednesday.

After a rocky beginning to the week that saw an offering from Lufthansa pulled — a rarity in the European corporate bond market — French transnational utility and service company Veolia managed to sell a total of €1.1bn in senior unsecured bonds across two tranches on Wednesday.

Phoenix Group Holdings, the UK life insurer and asset manager, will carry out a £735m rights issue to partly finance its takeover of Abbey Life, which it announced on Wednesday morning, causing its share price to rise by 3.6%.

The ebullient tone that characterised the first three weeks of September has faded as investors begin to fret over the US presidential election on November 8, but there is still life in the SSA market.

Books were nearly $2bn for the UAE's Union National Bank’s return to the markets on Wednesday With issuance from UAE banks limited thus far, the 20bp-25bp starting premium offered good value, according to one EM banker.

McDonald’s offered a Sfr400m ($413.6m) eight year trade to the Swiss market on Monday, closing the deal with an order book exceeding Sfr1.5bn and tightening pricing by more than the lead managers had expected.

National Bank of Canada (NBC), rarely seen in the covered bond market, issued a seven year deal on Thursday and although it offered virtually no concession, it was highly subscribed.

The Bank of Queensland’s (BoQ) upcoming conditional pass through (CPT) covered bond, the first CPT from an Australian issuer, will mark a major step in the use of the structure, with cross-currency swaps used for the first time.

South Korea’s Woori Bank printed a $500m Basel III additional tier one on Tuesday off the back of a modest $850m order book. The notes struggled a little in secondary the following day before rebounding on Thursday, putting the focus on the transaction’s pricing and timing, writes Addison Gong.