Commerzbank

Danske Bank has appointed Stephan Engels as chief financial officer, leaving the same post vacant at Commerzbank. The move comes as the Danish lender has been dealing with the fallout from a money laundering scandal, while its German counterpart has warned of difficult business conditions.

Five new corporate bond issues including a €3bn issue from AT&T hit the market on Wednesday, after Danaher had completed its €6.25bn deal on Tuesday, leaving room for more companies to borrow.

Sparebank 1 priced a seven year senior preferred bond in green format on Wednesday at mid-swaps plus 65bp. The €500m bond attracted demand of €700m but leads were not able to tighten pricing to the full extent of their ambitions.

A new flurry of investment grade corporate bond issuers jumped into the market on Wednesday morning, after Danaher priced its €6.25bn five-tranche Reverse Yankee note. Getting that deal out of the way gave other corporate borrowers room to bring bonds of their own — and plenty are expected to in the run-up toe the European Central Bank's monetary policy announcement on September 12.

Credit Suisse was marketing a 10 year bullet senior bond on Tuesday, avoiding negative yields by choosing a tenor longer than seven years. At the same time, Sparebank 1 announced it was readying its green debut in senior format.

Two near-investment grade industrials made a splash in the high yield bond market on Monday, with both Smurfit Kappa and Thyssenkrupp getting their order books oversubscribed multiple times.

Natixis has been building out its Asia Pacific presence, making some senior changes to its global markets team and adding three new bankers.

After two huge days of corporate bond issuance, Thursday was much quieter, with issues only from Vier Gas Transport and SBB Norden — not because the market was worse, but just because most of the issuers that wanted to come this week had crowded into the first two days.

Deutsche Pfandbriefbank was marketing a five year senior preferred bond in the euro market on Thursday. The deal was launched at a spread unmoved from price thoughts, with order books only €125m larger than the deal size.

The hail of issuance in European corporate bonds continued at full pelt on Wednesday as Orange and National Grid joined the fray with multi-tranche deals. Investors and issuers seem equally eager to do business.

Europe's corporate bond market opened emphatically for business on Tuesday, as seven issuers banished all memories of the summer holiday. Despite there being plenty of choice for investors, demand was high across the board. Multiple deals were two to three times oversubscribed, while the largest, a €3.5bn four trancher from Siemens, the machinery maker, was nearly 4.5 times covered.

With no major new issues in sight, the high yield bond market has been dominated by the news of troubled businesses struggling to come up with credible turnaround plans.