Europe

Sparebank 1 priced a seven year senior preferred bond in green format on Wednesday at mid-swaps plus 65bp. The €500m bond attracted demand of €700m but leads were not able to tighten pricing to the full extent of their ambitions.

Sajid Javid, the UK chancellor of the exchequer, said on Wednesday that the government has no intention to stop the sale of Gilts linked to the Retail Price Index (RPI), and that no changes would occur to the methodology until at least 2025.

Erste Group and Crédit Agricole competed for covered bond investors’ attention at the long end of the curve on Wednesday with a rise in yields helping boost demand, particularly for the Austrian deal which started with a generous spread. At the same time Deutsche Hypo issued a three year.

The price of Ukraine’s GDP warrants climbed rapidly this week on news of a “definite plan” to minimise the instruments’ impact on the country’s debt burden.

Raiffeisen Bank International sold a tier two bond this week, tightening pricing by 40bp. The trade was supported by hefty investor demand of €2.7bn, more than six times the deal's €500m size.

A new flurry of investment grade corporate bond issuers jumped into the market on Wednesday morning, after Danaher priced its €6.25bn five-tranche Reverse Yankee note. Getting that deal out of the way gave other corporate borrowers room to bring bonds of their own — and plenty are expected to in the run-up toe the European Central Bank's monetary policy announcement on September 12.

A £443.7m block trade in Avast, the London-listed Czech cyber security firm, on Tuesday night, has given confidence to equity bankers that deals can still be done this autumn, even when political volatility appears severe.

Russian pipe manufacturer Chelyabinsk Pipe Plant has become the second metals company from the country to announce plans for a roadshow this week, joining Severstal. The Chelpipe deal — a $300m Reg S/144A five year senior unsecured note — will be the company's debut in the Eurobond market.

The chorus of opposition from the European Central Bank’s Governing Council to the expected revival of its quantitative easing programme grew this week. But analysts say their opposition is merely a way of protecting themselves from likely public opposition to the restart of official bond buying.

France’s benchmark index the CAC 40 has outperformed all of its Western European peers bar Italy this year, leading to hope that this autumn’s French IPOs will be well received by investors, despite the wider macroeconomic and political uncertainties stalking European equity markets.

Financial institution investors, desperate for any sort of yield pick-up are keeping their cash away from secondaries in the hope of earning new issue concessions in a rejuvenated primary market.

Paddy Power is looking to sell US private placements in the next few weeks, according to market participants, as the Irish bookmaker is set to recreate the success of Australian peers in the market.