Europe

Renewables Infrastructure Group, the UK renewable energy investment company, has begun bookbuilding for a £80m follow-on offering on the London Stock Exchange, after the deal was given the green light by shareholders at a general meeting on Friday.

UniCredit’s German subsidiary, HVB, did well to issue a €750m seven year Pfandbrief on Tuesday, but with Italian headline risk flaring up again, it may have paid slightly over the odds.

Russian giant Gazprom and Ukrainian oil and gas firm Naftogaz, who have been locking horns in court, both chose Tuesday to release price guidance for new Eurobonds. The Gazprom deal will be the first public international bond from a Russian issuer since the US sanctions that shook the market in April. The Naftogaz bond is its first since 2009.

In a further sign that the European leveraged loan market is approaching the end of the year on a hot note, trading software provider OpenLink is looking to reduce the spread on the leveraged buyout loans it sold in March.

CEZ, a Czech utility company, came to market for four year euros on Tuesday, returning to the currency for its largest deal since 2013.

Kazatomprom, the world’s largest producer of natural uranium, priced a $451m IPO this week with a strong, but concentrated, book backing the deal.

Banca Carige announced its capital recovery plan on Monday, relying on friends and family to help it keep going. Italian banks have agreed to support it with €320m though the interbank deposit protection fund (FITD), and it will also be looking to existing shareholders.

The European Central Bank has said that it will conduct a "comprehensive assessment" of six banks in Bulgaria, following the country’s bid to join the European Banking Union.

European Union governments have pushed back against the European Commission’s proposed changes to the bloc’s financial regulators, opting to roll back the centralisation of power to independent executive boards.

UniCredit’s German subsidiary, HVB, has announced plans to issue a seven year euro benchmark Pfandbrief, its first covered bond in over a year. At the same time Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (PBB) plans to issue a dollar benchmark three year Pfandbrief.

A comparison of the redemption schedule for core European covered bonds versus redemptions from the European Central Bank’s asset purchase programme suggests that spreads in the asset class will start to stabilise in May 2019, after suffering a period of widening.

The Restaurant Group, the London-listed owner of Frankie & Benny’s, is pressing ahead with the £315m rights issue it announced last month to finance its acquisition of Wagamama, the Japanese restaurant chain, despite concern from some investors over the rationale for the takeover.