Credit Suisse

Bankers and investors believe Europe’s election schedule will drive up rates on new high yield bonds and increase the attraction of leveraged loans to issuers — even as Together Financial’s new sterling offering kept the market alive.

Swiss petrochemicals firm Ineos priced a €4.5bn-equivalent four tranche term facility refinancing at the tight end of guidance on Monday, taking advantage of a leveraged loan market where abundant demand and scarce new paper is grinding down margins and encouraging a wave of refinancings.

Indian school textbook publisher S Chand and Co has begun pre-marketing its IPO, which comprises primary and secondary equity.

A triumvirate of covered bond issuers from Denmark and Norway enjoyed stellar demand for their euro covered bond benchmarks this week.

It took a trim of the offering size and issuer’s leverage ratio to sway high yield investors, but French glass packaging manufacturer Verallia finally priced its new bond on Thursday.

Detsky Mir, the Russian toy retailer, this week priced its Rb18.4bn ($311m) Moscow IPO, the first IPO of significant size to be completed this year in EMEA.

Stone Canyon Industries, the US investment firm, has agreed to buy Mauser for $2.3bn after the German packaging supplier forewent a proposed initial public offering.

UK telecoms Virgin Media offered bondholders to exchange its 5.5% 2021 sterling bonds for new notes that increase coupons and maturities, but do away with restrictive covenants.

French bottle maker Verallia served on Wednesday an updated version of the offering it had to pull in October, when its shareholder Apollo disagreed over the terms with investors. The deal is now smaller, and the issuer less leveraged.

The IPO market in EMEA is enjoying mixed fortunes, with the successful completion of the largest flotation in Russia since 2014 and the withdrawal of the first German IPO of the year late on Tuesday due to a lack of demand at an acceptable price.

Two weeks after printing €250m of triple-C rated notes, container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd on Tuesday sailed into the market for an add-on.

The Dutch covered bond issuer, Van Lanschot Bankiers has mandated leads for the first 10 year covered bond in nearly a month and the first Dutch conditional pass through (CPT) since May 2016. The deal emerges following a Fitch survey suggesting investors would like to see price differentiation between soft bullet and CPT maturities.