Europe

Technical support for the sterling bond market still remained strong, investors said this week, as the UK’s Debt Management Office starts to shape up its multi-billion sterling issuance schedule.

Air France-KLM, the Franco-Dutch airline, on Wednesday issued a new €500m convertible bond due in 2026. The deal was repriced in the issuer’s favour after long-only convertible funds piled in, following a drought of new supply this year.

Danmarks Skibskredit has mandated leads for a 3.5 year single A rated Danish covered bond secured on shipping loans.

Skipton Building Society took advantage of a strong credit market and brief hiatus in the quickly evolving and politically chaotic backdrop to Brexit to issue a £600m five year Sonia linked covered bond. The deal was more heavily subscribed and attracted a broader range of investors than any of its previous deals, yet was priced with little or no new issue premium.

Vakifbank will be the next borrower to join the growing list of Turkish credits returning to the bond market after the nation’s currency crisis in 2018.

A flurry of Russian equity capital markets transactions have hit the market in the past fortnight, with three block trades priced and one IPO launched. After almost no Russian issuance since April 2018, many investors are keen to gain exposure to the country and sellers are taking advantage of a clear window before political volatility returns.

Crédit Agricole Italia’s eight year covered bond has the highest BondMarker average score of any deal issued so far this month. The transaction is closely followed by deals from Banco BPI and BPER Banka. Intesa Sanpaolo is leading among the six Italian covered bonds issued this year, but the survey is still open and some marks could yet improve.

Barclays gave investors a chance to buy deeply subordinated UK bank risk on Wednesday, joining a string of issuers in hitting the additional tier one market ahead of impending call dates.

The oldest private loan market in Germany has bagged the largest private company in India. Reliance Industries, the conglomerate headquartered in Mumbai and founded by Dhirubhai Ambani, has launched a Schuldschein — the first from the country, and what many market participants hope is a sign of things to come.

The European Central Bank will reboot its quantitative easing programme as a result of the weak growth outlook in the eurozone and could focus on purchasing equities instead of bonds, according to a head of fixed income at an asset management firm.

In this round-up China’s new Foreign Investment Law is tipped to spark a wave of capital inflows, the US and China attack each other’s human rights records, Bank of China (BOC) expects onshore bond yields to fall but offshore ones to stabilise

The European corporate bond market’s charmed life continued on Tuesday, as if the intensifying crisis of Brexit was just a dream. Two triple-B issuers and one single-A all found the same deep demand that has greeted every deal for the past few weeks.