Europe

Kommuninvest received a strong score from BondMarker voters for its final dollar benchmark of the year.

The UK’s GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to buy US oncology company Tesaro for $5.1bn, as 'long overdue' consolidation in the pharmaceutical sector continues apace.

Turkey’s Ziraat Bank is planning to issue covered bonds and has published a base prospectus for its €1bn programme. However, it is questionable whether a euro benchmark from the issuer will be seen any time soon.

Japan’s Takeda has signed an up to $3.7bn loan, with the pharmaceuticals company using the funds to continue chipping away at its bridge facility for its acquisition of Ireland’s Shire.

The UK Debt Management Office has chosen the tenor for the final syndication of its 2018-2019 financial year.

The Italian Interbank Deposit Protection Fund (FITD) has underwritten €320m of Banca Carige’s tier two capital notes. Private investors are now invited to subscribe to the issue, which allows the Italian lender to meet its capital targets.

VTB Capital is encouraging Russian borrowers to consider the dim sum market as a supplementary source of funding because their access to core markets has been restricted since the US imposed sanctions in April. However, the potential scale of the dim sum market is limited.

LCH, London Stock Exchange Group’s majority-owned clearing house, cleared over one quadrillion dollars of over-the-counter interest rate derivatives in 2018.

The European Mortgage Federation-European Covered Bond Council (EMF-ECBC) has set out a definition of an energy-efficient mortgage which should enable ‘a quick roll-out’, according to the European Commission.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has been looking into bondholder concerns after HSBC decided to reclassify four legacy bank capital instruments earlier this year, leading to a plummet in their value.

Green covered bond issuers should make sure to bring 'additionality', according to Timo Boehm, portfolio manager at Pimco. He also indicated that these deals did not deserve favourable pricing treatment.

Chinese brokerage Huatai Securities has won approval from the Mainland regulator to list Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) in London through the connect scheme with Shanghai.