Euro

On Tuesday, Italian energy company Enel sold €1.25bn of new hybrid bonds to help fund the repurchase of its hybrids with 2019 and 2020 call dates. The buyback was announced after the firm’s chief financial officer announced that the company would refinance up to €3.5bn of hybrids at a cost of about 3.5%.

German chemicals company BASF found substantial demand for its second visit to the corporate bond market to fund its acquisition of Bayer’s seed business.

Two mandates hit screens on Monday for supranational euro benchmarks. The Asian Development Bank (ADB), encouraged by a favourable basis swap, is set to make a rare appearance in the currency, coming to market alongside the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

BMW Finance had to negotiate its way through a busy corporate bond market on Monday as it sold a €1.75bn 4.5 and eight year dual tranche offering. It had to pay new issue premiums of around 8bp-10bp but saw strong demand.

Two A-rated corporates went head to head in the euro corporate bond market on Monday as UK pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and US electrical systems manufacturer United Technologies Corp both launched triple-tranche deals, with two matching maturities, which totalled €4.5bn.

Texan chemicals group Kraton opened up the European high yield deal pipeline this week with a debut deal that will help refinance a dollar bond. The firm is also topping up a US loan as it looks to cut its borrowing costs.

The euro corporate bond market is set bounce back with a vengeance next week, with all bankers expecting heavy supply after two weeks shortened by public holidays.

The euro bond market should spring back into life next week, with a pair of quiet weeks safely in the rear view mirror.

Investors may be underestimating the chance of a Eurosceptic, populist government taking power in Italy, one expert on the country warned this week, as the Five Star Movement and Northern League on Thursday made strong progress on forming a coalition — without any mainstream parties. When the general election in early March failed to deliver a government, such a coalition was widely deemed the worst possible outcome for the market — particularly as one of the few policies the duo share is a looser fiscal policy.

Rating: Baa2/BBB/BBB (Moody’s, S&P, Fitch)

Rating: Baa3/BBB-/BBB (Moody’s, S&P, Scope)

A supranational dollar deal ran away with April’s top spot in BondMarker, outstripping the rest of the table by a good margin and clocking in as the third most highly rated deal of the year.