Europe

Volkswagen has closed the books on the long-awaited spin-off of its truck division, Traton, at €27 a share, the bottom of the price range. It was a positive result for the company, according to sources speaking to GlobalCapital.

Axa SFH issued its debut covered bond on Thursday, attracting a comfortably oversubscribed order book for the positive yielding eight year, which was priced at close to fair value. At the same time, Nationwide Building Society took advantage of the Swiss National Bank’s more generous repo arrangements to issue a three-part covered bond denominated in Swiss francs.

ReAssure, one of the largest life insurance companies in the UK, has begun bookbuilding for one of the biggest IPOs on the London Stock Exchange this year, with a price range that pitches the company at a significant discount to its peers, according to a banker involved in the IPO.

TBC Bank, Georgia’s largest, sold its first ever additional tier one (AT1) bond on Wednesday, completing a successful transaction in spite of political demonstrations taking place in the capital, Tblisi, this week.

A pair of emerging market banks placed MTNs this week. In Australian dollars, Banco del Estado de Chile printed a 10 year note on Tuesday, while on Monday, Qatar National bank placed short end dollar paper.

Standard Chartered debut sustainability bond was nearly seven times subscribed this week after socially responsible investors embraced a deal that gave opportunities to make impacts in emerging, rather than developed, markets.

Buzzi Unicem has returned to the Schuldschein market, looking for at least €100m of debt in four maturities. The pricing levels are tighter than on the Italian cement and concrete group’s debut Schuldschein in 2017. Bankers thought this was thanks to investors' growing familiarity with the borrower, as well as a rating upgrade from Standard & Poor's.

Voltalia, the French renewable power producer, has launched a €376m rights issue to finance increased capacity, and has won a new investor in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Motability Operations Group, the UK company that operates the UK government's scheme to provide cars for the disabled, printed a £1.438bn-equivalent euro and sterling three tranche bond on Wednesday, in a busy day that also brought a €1bn two part issue from OMV, the Austrian oil and gas company.

Sean Hanafin has moved to supply chain finance firm Greensill as vice-chair.

Medtronic, the Irish-registered US medical devices maker, returned to the euro bond market on Tuesday for a jumbo issue of €5bn, only three months after issuing a €7bn deal - a move that highlights the attractiveness of the euro market. Once again, Medtronic is using the money to buy back dollar bonds.

Unless the EU extends equivalence status to Swiss exchanges before the end of the week, shares from firms in one of the two jurisdictions will not be able to be traded in the other one. This could cause disruption and market fragmentation, although the exact impact is unknown.