Danske Bank

Banks and insurance companies were falling over one another to issue green bonds this week, with deal arrangers seeing ESG labels as near infallible ways of bringing pricing through fair value, write Tyler Davies and David Freitas.

Swedish debt purchaser Intrum sold a tap of its 4.875% 2025 unsecured notes on Wednesday, intending to use the funds to part-pay its revolving credit facility. With a strong backdrop, and plenty of RCF drawings still outstanding, the company increased the deal by €50m during syndication.

Commerzbank and Unipol Group ‘ticked all the boxes’ with their new green senior transactions on Wednesday, amassing large orders from investors.

Seven Yankee banks stole a march this week in the race to frontload funding, as September got off to its usual red-hot start in dollars.

Ford, the US car maker, offered investment grade bond investors a chance to dip into high yield on Tuesday. And its rival, Nissan Motor, is lining up a seven tranche behemoth bond issue that will create a euro curve out to eight years.

Europe’s corporate bond investors had the spectrum of credit ratings to pick from on Thursday, from A- rated Volvo Treasury down to German speculative grade fallen angel ZF Friedrichshafen.

DNB Boligkreditt did not waste any time waiting to tap its covered bond first issued last week, raising a further Skr500m on Thursday in order to capitalise on the attractiveness of the Swedish krona compared with other currencies.

Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA

Glencore, the UK commodity trading company, captured the corporate bond market’s attention on Wednesday with the first test of demand for a cyclical credit since the summer break. Investors jumped at the deal, with leads launching it flat to the borrower’s curve.

Sweden’s long gestating green bond debut came to fruition this week as the sovereign scooped Skr20bn ($2.3bn) at a discount to its conventional curve.

Rating: A3/A/A

Following a series of investor calls, Sweden has announced the tenor of its debut green bond, which is expected to be issued early next week through syndication.