Europe

Trustpilot, the Danish independent review platform, has completed its series E equity funding round, raising $55m to finance investment in marketing and its technology platform.

French car manufacturer Peugeot has begun marketing a Schuldschein, as market participants are confident in attracting corporates fresh out of results season.

Finland is unlikely to join the growing band of sovereign green bond issuers, after the head of its treasury’s finance division said that adding the format to its funding mix “would not help the liquidity of our nominal benchmark bonds”.

The State of North Rhine Westphalia sold an unusually large amount of debt in the SSA market on Wednesday through a dual tranche offering, with one of the bonds coming with a sustainable label.

Inchcape, the UK car dealer, has amended and extended its bank debt, and senior loans bankers have come out in favour of this early refinancing structure, though it is reviled in some parts of the market.

The EMEA equity blocks market continues to be driven by fundamental interest in specific stocks and bankers and investors expect more trades where a single investor supports the deal by taking a large proportion of the stock.

Europe’s corporate bond market is on classic form, swallowing six-tranche monster deals, hybrid issues paired with senior and other juicy trades day after day. Vodafone’s £3.4bn mandatorily convertible bond grabbed the attention on Tuesday with coupons that looked astonishingly low for sub debt, but behind it all is a rally caused by, of all things, economic uncertainty.

Clydesdale Bank was more than four times subscribed when it launched a new additional tier one capital bond in the sterling market on Wednesday, in an interesting test of demand for UK risk assets at a crucial stage in the Brexit negotiations.

Banque Fédérative du Crédit Mutuel looked to the long end with its first non-preferred senior bond on Wednesday, following the example Crédit Agricole set late last month.

The outcome of Ukraine’s presidential elections at the end of March will bear great influence on the nation’s economic future, and investors are fearful of the results.

Stadshypotek was able to tighten pricing by 4bp to land on top of fair value for a seven year covered bond on Wednesday, as financial institutions hit the market ahead of a European Central Bank meeting later in the week. It was joined in the euro market by the Mortgage Society of Finland (Suohyp), which was also selling a seven year deal.

A US pension fund has filed a class action suit against two of the banks suspected by the European Commission of breaching EU competition law in their trading of European government bonds between 2007 and 2012.