Europe

Michelle Scrimgeour is set to head up Legal & General’s investment management arm, leaving Columbia Threadneedle Investments.

Investors put in more than €6bn of orders for a new non-preferred senior bond from Crédit Agricole at the beginning of the week, after the French bank opened books on the longest dated deal of the year so far.

Asset managers with a longer-term interest in stocks have started to replace hedge funds in backing equity capital markets transactions, a trend which has become apparent in the past few weeks.

UBI Banca has given financial institutions bond investors one of their first opportunities to pick up high yielding product in the euro market this year, with the Italian lender opening books on a new tier two on Monday.

Symrise, the unrated German flavours and fragrances company, has entered the Schuldschein on the hunt for loans to help finance its $900m acquisition of International Dehydrated Foods.

Sir Gerry Grimstone is vacating his position as chair of Barclays’ non-ringfenced bank at the end of the month, to be replaced by incoming group chair Nigel Higgins.

Analysts at Deloitte said this week that they expected the Bank of England would not renew its Term Funding Scheme, leading to a substantial rise in secured issuance volumes. This is at odds with the views of some market participants, who believe that Brexit could make a new funding programme inevitable in the UK.

Danske Bank paid a higher than average new issue premium for non-preferred senior this week, as the money laundering scandal surrounding the institution deepened with new investigations and supervisory actions.

The French state has continued its privatisation drive with state-owned bank Bpifrance selling a €284.7m stake in Eutelsat Communications on Thursday.

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Representatives of the EU member states announced on Thursday an agreement on InvestEU, a bloc-wide investment fund that will replace the European Investment Bank’s fund for strategic investment (EFSI) after 2020.

Robin Phillips, the long-serving co-head of global banking at HSBC is retiring in the summer, leaving Greg Guyett as the sole head of the business. Guyett will take full charge before Phillips has left the bank.