Currencies

France's Agence Française de Développement is looking to hire a director of its treasury and capital markets department.

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Société Générale benefitted from calmer issuance conditions on Thursday as it sold €1bn of new tier two debt. The deal takes another chunk out of the issuer’s capital plans, which totalled a sizeable €4.5bn at the beginning of the year.

Unédic, the French unemployment agency, had the euro SSA primary market to itself on Wednesday, allowing it to comfortably print €3bn with its second social bond benchmark of the year.

A trio of SSAs brought SRI themed Kangaroo bonds to market this week, enjoying a recent bout of tranquillity following the Reserve Bank of Australia’s intervention.

Trading levels given are bid-side spreads versus mid-swaps and/or an underlying benchmark and bid-yields from the close of business on Tuesday, March 23. The source for secondary trading levels is ICE Data Services.

The European Union made a quick trip to the bond market on Tuesday morning to collect €13bn — €8bn at five years and €5bn at 25. It found itself selling into stronger market conditions than have prevailed for the past few weeks, thanks to the European Central Bank’s beefed up intervention. But despite the strong backdrop, the market is still quieter than expected.

Greece has struggled with the colossal challenge of rehabilitating its capital markets reputation since its debt crisis in 2009. But last week, it took a big step forward, returning to the 30 year tenor for the first time in well over a decade. Dimitrios Tsakonas, head of the Greek Public Debt Management Agency. told GlobalCapital about the journey the PDMA has undertaken.

An imminent bond issue from Turkey is looking unlikely, investors say, after the abrupt sacking on Saturday of Naci Ağbal, governor of the central bank, just a day after he had raised interest rates by 200bp. Both hard and local currency bonds have sold off and market participants fear a balance of payments crisis.

Russian Railways ventured into the Swiss franc market this week to sell the first hybrid corporate bond in over two years, a sign of a maturing Swissie market, according to local market participants.

Barclays and Standard Chartered gave euro investors rare opportunities to build subordinated exposure to UK banks this week. The issuers were looking to benefit from strong market conditions during a more stable trading period for interest rates.

Verizon Communications, the US telecoms group, embarked on an almost $3bn niche currency bond issuing spree this week, which included the largest foreign Swiss franc bond since early 2018.