Coronavirus

SIX Group, the owner of the Swiss stock exchange, was in the market on Monday night with a sale of shares in French payments company Worldline. Investors poured into the deal demonstrating their appetite for high quality tech firms amid the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.

The European Commission said on Tuesday that it would amend bank capital rules in the EU to free up more capacity for lending during the coronavirus pandemic. Its new measures include a proposal to reset the transitional period for IFRS 9, as well as several changes to leverage ratio requirements.

Norwegian video conferencing company Pexip has been hailed by equity capital markets bankers as an ideal IPO for the times amid a surge in remote working due to the Covid-19 global pandemic.

Kookmin Bank’s move to print a dollar bond to raise money for Covid-19 relief shows that sovereigns, government-owned banks, agencies and multilateral development banks are not the only ones that can help tackle the pandemic. Privately-owned firms also have a big role to play in global stimulus efforts.

Capital markets bankers wondering about a possible ‘summer slowdown’ in transactions should put the thought firmly out of their heads. This year, the traditional break in August is likely to be replaced by an all-hands-on-deck approach to tackle the deal backlog.

Last week, IDB Invest raised $1bn with its largest deal ever, a $1bn two year fixed rate bond. Although the proceeds of the bond will not be segregated from its regular funding, the issuer is adding a “Covid-19 lens” to the framework used to assess its development effectiveness.

Investment banks are working with issuers preparing rights issues for balance sheet repair, as governments across Europe prepare to ease Covid-19 lockdowns.

Italy’s credit rating is dividing analysts. Some believe that it should have been downgraded by S&P on April 24 because of the country's ballooning debt burden, while others felt that the European Central Bank can keep the refinancing risk at bay.

Spreads in the financial institutions bond market have sprung back to more ‘normal’ levels lately, but issuers may have to wait a little while longer before capitalising on the improvement in conditions, given that many of them are side-lined by earnings blackouts.

Crisis lending to emerging market sovereigns is coming ever more from multilateral development banks rather than commercial lenders, as the latter retreat to funding companies and other financial institutions.

The European Commission will put forward a legislative proposal next week that could give banks more room for flexibility when applying the IFRS 9 accounting standards.

The coronavirus pandemic is shaking up the competitive landscape in capital markets, as some firms find it harder to commit to deals — but there are winners, too, and one of the most notable cases is BNP Paribas’s presence in the syndicated loan market.