Europe

Three senior staff from Aviva Investors have left the institution to launch a private debt fund focused on impact investment at Eiffel Investment Group.

Société Générale has begun its planned round of redundancies and the first name GlobalCapital has associated with the cuts has been with the bank for over a decade.

Shares in Synthomer, the UK producer of aqueous polymers, closed 1.3% higher on Wednesday after the company announced a £204m rights issue to finance its expansion in the US.

Commerzbank has appointed a head of public sector origination and syndication, and a head of international banks, as part of a reorganisation of its debt capital markets business, GlobalCapital understands.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) issued its first euro covered bond in well over a year on Wednesday and was able to reap the benefit of its rare appearance by pricing a €1bn eight year flat to its curve.

Santander set a new milestone in the covered bond market on Wednesday with its €1.5bn 10 year, which was one of the most oversubscribed deals of this size and tenor in years.

Ade Ademakinwa will rejoin Deutsche Bank as head of its European financial institutions syndicate desk, just as a senior and longstanding member of that team departs.

Handelsbanken has appointed Juha Mustonen as its new head of debt capital markets for Finland. He will work with Finnish loan and bond clients.

Signs of weakness have crept into the FIG secondary market in recent days, but market participants expect that banks will carry on piling into the market ahead of blackout periods and an expected summer slowdown.

Turkey returned to the market on Tuesday, raising $2.25bn of five year dollar paper with a slim new issue premium. The deal was timed to take advantage of a tremendous rally in Turkish asset prices, but not all investors are convinced.

President Trump's friendlier tone at the G20 meeting in Osaka last weekend, when he said the US would not immediately raise tariffs on Chinese imports, has given investment grade corporate bond issuers a bullish market this week, and several have taken advantage. High yield is quiet, by contrast.

Investors are increasingly showing "price discipline" in the primary market, according to FIG bankers, even though falling yields have severely limited their ability to quibble over returns.