Euro

The Development Bank of Japan was able to tighten pricing on a €700m October 2025 sustainability bond this week, something not every issuer has found possible in the currency in the past few weeks. Meanwhile, the World Bank tapped an old friend for $200m with a green bond.

Two Nordic agencies have raised their funding needs for the year due to an increase in their lending activity, just as the final quarter has begun.

The European Stability Mechanism is likely to aim for the six to eight year part of the euro curve when it brings its first deal of the fourth quarter next week, said SSA bankers. The trade will likely face a more cautious investor base than the borrower enjoyed earlier in the year, they added.

Rating: B1/B+

American real estate investment trust (REIT) WP Carey paid a significant premium when it sold its second euro deal of 2018 on Tuesday. Despite the lack of reverse Yankee issuance this year, investors needed some persuading to buy the 7.5 year deal.

Romania hit screens on Thursday morning for its second dual tranche euro benchmark of the year.

A dearth of corporate bond supply on Wednesday, due to a German public holiday, was followed by deals from airport operators in two markets on Thursday. Aéroports de Paris (AdP) opted for the domestic route, while Heathrow made its first visit to the Australian market.

Italian government bonds enjoyed a strong start to Wednesday morning as investors digested talk that the country’s budget plans could be less spending heavy than previously thought. But the buy-side was sceptical that Italy’s populist government will stick to the plans — and BTPs had already retraced some of their earlier gains by the late morning.

The Republic of Albania returned to the capital markets for the first time in three years on Tuesday, selling a euro benchmark.

Quite often, a record period of issuance comes to an abrupt halt as investors require a period of time to digest the volume of issuance, allow for some performance of the bonds they have bought and cash piles to replenish. After a record third quarter in the euro corporate bond market however, investors are keen for more.

Italy’s latest political drama is making investors nervous, and rightly so — when the leader of a country’s main governing party accuses European leaders of market ‘terrorism’, in the vein of an ‘EU equals the USSR’ conspiracy theorist, then you’d be right to dump its bonds. But the steadiness of Spanish and Portuguese govvies through all this shows not only that the term ‘eurozone periphery’ may have to be consigned to the historical dustbin, but that the firewalls erected by those same European leaders after the last sovereign debt crisis are standing firm.

Amphenol Technologies, the European subsidiary of a US fibreoptic cable connector firm, sold its first bond in euros on Monday. Despite a weaker secondary tone, demand for the 10 year deal justified the issuer’s decision to press ahead with the trade.