Europe

Renewables pair bring sunshine to project finance market - National Bank of Oman launches loan syndication - Cubico lights up project finance desks - Drax completes bridge refinancing with PPs, ESG debt - Italy’s IMA raises €50m via Euro PP market

East Midlands Housing Group (EMH), a housing association located in the UK county of Leicestershire, has secured £100m ($124.8m) of long-dated debt from the Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC).

Clearing house LCH has hired Isabelle Girolami as its chief executive. She comes from Crédit Agricole’s corporate and investment bank (CIB), where she was deputy CEO.

A treasury head at a German agency, which he helped set up from scratch, has left after nine years to return to the banking sector.

Few German IPOs are expected in the second half of the year and the deteriorating economic outlook is likely to disrupt the equity financing plans of the country’s corporates, particularly mid-cap industrial names that are heavily exposed to their home market.

Worldline, the French payments company, attracted strong investor demand for a negative-yielding €600m convertible bond due in 2026, to refinance its acquisition of a minority stake in equensWorldline, its transaction processing subsidiary.

With new issue activity in Swiss francs now grinding to its usual summer halt, syndicate managers and investors are bracing themselves for another extension to the lower for longer rates environment.

As the market prepares for Libors to end their run as the world’s most prevalent reference rates, there is growing support for the benchmarks to be reprieved.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Banco Santander tapped the sterling market for senior bonds this week and what bankers said were high-quality orders led both issuers to increase the size of the benchmark transactions.

Ukraine’s government bonds rallied ferociously this week after a decisive victory for president Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party in Sunday’s parliamentary elections. As the end of the week approached, investors started to question how much further the buying could run and what the fate of the country’s GDP warrants will be.

Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations has returned to the Samurai market with what the issuer and leads said was the lowest ever coupon in the format.

An expected return of Brexit volatility means that there are likely to be fewer UK firms doing IPOs in the fourth quarter of the year, but London will continue to host high profile international listings to make up the shortfall.