Europe

Greece is rumoured to be planning a return to the bond market in the summer to fund an early repayment of its loans to the International Monetary Fund.

La Banque Postale saved around 2bp on pricing by going green on its latest inaugural 10 year senior non-preferred paper, reaffirming the discrepancy between supply and demand in the euro green bond market.

ABN Amro returned to the covered bond market on Monday to issue the largest 20 year transaction so far in 2019. Banks have increasingly found favour in placing deals with the ultra-long maturities, amid renewed speculation that the European Central Bank could restart asset purchases.

Simon Lewis, the founding CEO of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, the wholesale markets lobbyist, is leaving his post later this year.

BMW Automotive Finance (China) is on track to launch its debut auto lease receivables-backed securitization. The company is expecting to close the Rmb2.5bn ($373m) Bavarian Sky China Leasing 2019-1 asset backed note later this week.

The Scottish American Investment Co (SAINTS), an investment trust managed by Baillie Gifford, has raised £80m of debt in private placements.

Peter Schikaneder, head of global corporate bond origination at Commerzbank, has retired. He has been a well known figure in the bond market since the 1990s.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress Nordic agencies have made in their 2019 funding programmes.

Shares in Stadler Rail, the Swiss maker of rolling stock, gained as much as 12.9% in trading on Friday after it priced its Sfr1.33bn IPO at a discount to its Swiss industrial peers.

The financial institutions bond market was confined to a handful of small trades this week, as Wall Street self-funders prepared to pull the trigger on multi-billion trades after reporting season.

Banco BPM split opinion with a debut additional tier one bond this week, paying up to issue but proving that there’s a chance for the middle tier of Italy to access the market. The bank joined only two other Italians in having sold deals in the asset class — the national champion banks Intesa Sanpaolo and UniCredit, writes David Freitas.

Activist investor Edward Bramson will be hard-pressed to succeed in his bid to get a seat on the board of Barclays. But his push to get the firm to retreat from investment banking could well find a better reception among weary investors.