Europe

The UK’s Helical has amended and extended its bank debt, with the office real estate firm ramping up the size of its revolving credit facility to £400m.

There are only eleven votes between the top three contenders for GlobalCapital’s 2019 Covered Bond Issuer of the Year award: Lloyds, Toronto Dominion and Royal Bank of Canada. These banks have issued a number notable covered bonds in euros, dollars and sterling, which are summarised in the following article.

FMS Wertmanagement has made an internal appointment for the new head of its treasury, following the departure of Tim Armbruster in July.

The US has imposed sanctions on Russian sovereign debt in response to the use of a banned nerve agent in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy. However, the sanctions are not severe enough to have damaged demand for Russian bonds in the secondary market.

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank printed its first bond denominated in Azerbaijani manat last week, raising Am10m ($5.9m) with an auction of a two year bond.

Equity capital markets bankers were glancing at a sea of red across global equities on Monday, but they were grateful that volatility has only flared up during a traditionally quiet period for new issuance.

Analysts at Danske Bank have said that Moody's could raise Portugal's credit rating this week even, amid signs of a weakening European economy. Such a move would have a knock-on impact for the country's banking industry, which has shown clear progress in improving its asset quality.

John Flint quit his position as CEO of HSBC on Monday after less than two years in the job, as the bank warned of difficult global conditions in its second quarter results. The bank’s chair Mark Tucker implied the desire for change related to a problem with Flint’s execution of the bank’s strategy, rather than the strategy itself, but the departure has also raised questions about HSBC’s Chinese operations.

The European Commission has asked the European Banking Authority (EBA) to say how Basel IV could affect banks’ ability to meet their total loss-absorbing capacity (TLAC) requirements — work that it says is "essential" to understanding the impact of the new reforms.

Crédit Agricole said it could start to unwind the ‘switch 2’ capital guarantee provided by its regional banking network in 2020 after it revealed a small boost to its common equity tier one (CET1) ratio in its second quarter results on Friday. Meanwhile, capital markets and investment banking operations did not perform well over the quarter.

Luxury sports car company Ferrari has sold €300m of US private placement notes, according to an SEC filing on Friday. Its debut offering is one of only a handful of transactions from the auto sector to reach the market.

Corporate borrowing activity is expected to be sustained throughout the second half of the year as borrowers "take advantage" of the liquidity in the loan market. The expectation comes in the aftermath of two large dividend recapitalisation transactions by Polish corporates, Allegro and Żabka, in the second quarter.