Crédit Agricole

Elysium Healthcare, the property portfolio being spun out of the Priory Group to BC Partners, has cut its sterling loan offering to £133m after reaching a ground rent agreement mid-transaction.

Four European lenders have turned down a $2bn loan for National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), while local banks are starting to return to secondary markets for the first time in a year — signs that the Middle Eastern loan market could see a different set of banks driving it in 2017. Elly Whittaker reports.

France has carried and cared for the idea of creating an explicitly bail-inable class of senior debt for about nine months, but the birth of the new asset class this week was swift, effortless and pain-free. Success of the first two deals was critically important, as investors will become very familiar with the new product in the first quarter of 2017.

Making senior debt explicitly bail-inable fundamentally changes the risk profile of the asset class. Investors must not take that shift lightly.

Rating: A1/A/A

Commitments for CVC-owned French healthcare firm Elsan were due on Thursday for its €730m acquisition term loan, after guidance was tightened twice in an ever bullish loan market as the year end drew near.

UK and Irish investors took the market by surprise hoovering up over 40% of Crédit Agricole’s market opening senior non-preferred trade this week, though French accounts took the bulk of Société Générale’s follow-up deal.

Investors plugged another €3.5bn into the second ever senior non-preferred bond from Société Générale this week, in an early sign the market will be able to digest the large quantities expected from French banks next year.

National Bank of Abu Dhabi signed a $2bn three year loan on Tuesday, cementing the bank group for its $175bn merger with First Gulf Bank, though some key European banks turned down a role on the deal.

Spain’s construction sector has been a sore point in the high yield market this year, with three of its big hitters either in distress, debt restructuring or increasingly surrounded by accounting disputes and corruption. Investor adviser CreditSights this week said major shareholder families behind those companies bear some responsibility.

Investors greeted Crédit Agricole’s market opening senior non-preferred trade with more than €5bn of orders on Tuesday, allowing the issuer to bring pricing closer to its vanilla senior curve. Société Générale quickly showed it wanted to be next in line, in what is shaping up as an encouraging start for the new asset class.

Amundi’s shares closed at a record high on Monday, up 5.4%, after it announced it would use a €1.4bn rights issue and €600m of senior and subordinated debt to buy Pioneer Investments from UniCredit.