Europe

Germany’s Railpool has signed green financing totalling more than €800m, as loans bankers say sustainability-linked facilities are becoming more popular with German borrowers after largely being ignored until now.

Investors showed strong support for a new subordinated bond from Zurich Insurance at the beginning of the week, though the firm ended up paying only a small premium for the new issue.

Earnings growth in Europe appears to be slowing with a number of corporates missing estimates as they report their latest numbers — increasing the chance that issuers will need to turn to equity markets to raise primary capital.

Cadent Gas has entered the US private placement (US PP) market via Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Lloyds, according to market participants.

Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) has launched a $150m US private placement, according to two US PP participants.

Mark Tucker, group chair of HSBC, will join TheCityUK later this year, replacing John McFarlane.

ICBC Standard Bank has hired Daniel Britz and Brendan Melvin to join its risk management department.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has ramped up its Brexit preparations by establishing a new EU broker dealer and appointing Sanaz Zaimi as its CEO.

TSB successfully issued its inaugural Sonia linked deal which, in contrast to the bank’s previous attempt that was blighted by political uncertainty, it attracted a comfortably oversubscribed order book. The successful outcome suggests the bank can now look ahead to a more normal year according to TSB treasurer, Alison Straszewski.

Shares in Symrise, the German supplier of food flavouring and fragrances, rose as much as 2.1% on Friday morning after the company completed a €400m capital increase to finance its acquisition of International Dehydrated Foods in the US.

OP Mortgage Bank has issued the first Finnish covered bond of the year and did so at the same spread and in larger size than DZ Hyp managed little more than two weeks ago. With 10 year Bund yields heading towards zero, yield starved investors are chasing the market even tighter.

Blackstone Property Partners Europe on Friday made its third visit to the corporate bond market in eight months and opted for a maturity between its two outstanding bonds. The property fund has now printed €1.75bn of bonds since it sold its Logicor logistics business to China Investment Corp in June 2017.