Euro

Bookrunners on China Development Bank Corp’s debut international green bond have released price guidance for a dual-tranche transaction featuring dollars and euros.

Quite often after a busy couple of days the corporate bond market pauses for breath. Not this week. Six new issues on Wednesday took the deal count for the week to 14, with little discernible effect on spreads.

The Agence Française de Développement (AFD) managed to pull its spread in by 6bp from price guidance on its six year green bond issue today, attracting a heavily oversubscribed book full of investors seemingly ready to buy at any price.

Italian corporate issuers have dominated bond issuance in recent weeks but Wednesday brought a pair from Iberia, as two energy suppliers took advantage of the market's hot conditions.

American delivery company United Postal Service made its latest annual visit to the euro corporate bond market on Wednesday, leaving with €1bn of tightly priced bonds.

In October, German chemicals company BASF announced it had agreed to buy parts of Bayer’s seed and non-selective herbicide businesses for €5.9bn, all in cash. On Wednesday it started to fund that with a €3bn triple tranche bond sale.

The Republic of Lithuania on Tuesday drew a combined €1.27bn book for its taps as investors rushed to take a piece of what could be Lithuania’s last international bond for over a year.

Corporate bond spreads may be agonisingly tight, and getting tighter by the week, but investors still think they can squeeze value out of the market.

The European Financial Stability Facility rounded off its funding programme for the year with a pair of taps on Tuesday with a deal praised as “an impressive result”.

Two weeks ago four investment grade corporate bond deals totalling €7.4bn were priced on the Monday, but that resulted in the rest of the week being starved of supply. This week however, the five deals that printed on Monday were followed by three more new deals on Tuesday.

Swedish property company Akelius Residential Property has sold eight year deals in euros and sterling during the last six months, as well as a four year Swedish krone deal. That concentrated funding activity didn’t affect the success of another euro deal on Tuesday though.

On Tuesday, Spanish infrastructure operator Ferrovial tapped into demand for the enhanced yield offered by hybrid bonds and matched the second lowest coupon ever on such an instrument.