Europe

The Schuldschein market has become a hotbed of technological innovation over the past 12 months, with as many as 11 digital platforms cropping up, claiming to have solutions to the instrument’s age-old, if slightly charming, inefficiencies. Silas Brown looks into the secrets to a digital platform’s success.

The Euro private placement as an organised, visible, investment grade-like market has disappointed its founders. But despite unfavourable monetary policy, institutional corporate lending has taken hold. As Jon Hay discovers, the deals are there — but well camouflaged.

LONDON PRIVATE DEBT ROUNDTABLE The UK’s private debt market is one of the most vibrant in Europe. London is the most active centre in Europe for US private placement investing, and UK borrowers have longstanding links with that market.

The US private placement market has carved itself quite a following among borrowers in the UK and Europe, with its enticing offer of long dated debt at tight margins. But since Britain voted to leave the European Union, agents are playing on another of the market’s strengths — its resilience to external shocks. Silas Brown investigates.

The City of London Corporation, via its endowment fund the City’s Cash, is set to enter the US private placement market for the first time. While UK councils are still a rare sight in the US PP market, agents believe they may be a fruitful asset class for the future. Silas Brown reports.

Dutch agency BNG via DZ Bank has placed the first ‘smart n-bond’, a Namensschuldverschreibung (NSV) issued through digital platform European private placement facility (eppf). Participants hailed this transaction as a step towards a functioning pan-European private placement market.

Renault issued a €1bn bond from its industrial arm on Monday, after a tumultuous few weeks in which the company had negotiated a (for now) abandoned merger offer from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. The deal came amid a busy flurry of smaller issues.

Becci McKinley-Rowe will join BlackRock later this year to co-lead the investment firm’s fundamental active equities business for the Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Issuance and average daily trading volumes of European government bonds rose in the first quarter of 2019, according to a report by Afme on Monday.

The European Commission is set to announce on Wednesday whether it will extend the “equivalence” status granted to Swiss stock exchange SIX, which ends at the end of the month. The exercise is mostly political, as Brussels is using it to pressure the Swiss government into signing a general diplomatic agreement.

A team of 14 investment company specialists is joining Investec’s corporate and investment bank from Canaccord Genuity, which has decided to restructure its capital markets operations in the UK.

Ex-Standard Chartered and JP Morgan banker Matthew Dunker is moving to Nomura.