Europe

Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten failed to reach full subscription for its €750m November 2025 sustainability bond this week, with the issuer attributing the lack of orders to the volatile market conditions.

Kongsberg Gruppen, a Norwegian supplier of technology systems to the offshore oil and gas sector, has finished a Nkr5bn (€513m) rights issue with a healthy level of oversubscription.

There was little appetite for Italian inflation-linked debt this week, as Italy issued just over €2bn for its first BTP Italia sale since the sovereign’s bonds began selling off in May.

With covered bond spreads likely to go wider, ANZ’s decision to take as much size from the market as possible was logical. The short and rare four year tenor was instrumental in boosting appeal for the bond issue, but it also helped that the issuer took the trouble to engage with investors with a roadshow beforehand.

The UK’s Keller Group has signed a £375m syndicated loan to refinance debts, as the engineering company looks to take “tough but necessary actions” through a multi-million pound strategic restructuring to cull lossmaking operations.

At the latest monetary policy meeting of the European Central Bank, governing council members mentioned the looming end of the targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTRO II). But experts reckon that the life of this cheap liquidity programme could be extended, and that it may even be used to help stem a financial crisis in Italy.

Huatai Securities, the Chinese asset management business, has filed an intention to float document for a $500m London listing of global depositary receipts, the first under the new Shanghai-London Stock Connect segment of the London Stock Exchange.

Bankers in the corporate bond market still have a number of deals on their pads to try to execute ahead of the end of 2018. None was successful this week, but that hasn’t dented their ambition.

Debt capital markets bankers are expecting a rise in preferred senior bond issuance as financial institutions grapple with tougher market conditions and start to tailor their funding towards regulatory requirements.

The head of NatWest Markets' private placement business has left the bank.

VakıfBank has closed an $855m-equivalent refinancing loan, making it the fifth Turkish financial institution to successfully refinance this season. Vakıf is set to be followed closely by Garanti Bank, as Turkish financial institutions defy the crisis of confidence in the country's economy that was triggered when the lira crashed in August.

Loans bankers in Asia already bemoaning the reduced outbound M&A driven activity from China could be dealt a further blow after the European Union (EU) said it will start screening foreign direct investment (FDI) more closely. Pan Yue examines the impact this will have on Asia’s leveraged and acquisition financing market.