Europe
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When UK telecoms company Vodafone announced in May that it had agreed to buy some of US rival Liberty Global’s European operations, it said it would use existing cash, €3bn of mandatorily convertible bonds and new debt, including hybrid bonds to fund the €18.4bn acquisition. On Wednesday, Vodafone sold the hybrid bonds, using four different tenors in three currencies. Nigel Owen reports. -
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Hedge funds are more reluctant to play the market for equity block trades in Europe after a volatile year and a string of deals that traded down in the aftermarket.
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The lengthy complaint about HSBC management drafted, purportedly, by investment bankers at the firm must be taken seriously and investigated, if its new chief executive John Flint wants to win the confidence of the rest of the staff and shareholders, argues Jon Hay in a GlobalCapital View.
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Deals from Santander Consumer Finance and Crédit Mutuel Arkéa helped to take the volume of senior unsecured issuance in the five year maturity to more than €10bn following the summer break.
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Prudential plc came to the market on Wednesday for a strategic deal to boost the capital position of a prospective entity it plans to cut loose, M&G Prudential. Those on the buy-side saw the notes as cheap, notwithstanding any extra cost for a clause allowing for issuer substitution.
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French electricity utility EDF continued a busy September with the first hybrid corporate bond deal in the euro market for more than two months on Tuesday. It also sold a new senior trade in euros, following a $3.75bn triple tranche deal in the US the previous week.
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SIG Combibloc, the Swiss food and beverage packaging company, has closed the books on its return to the Swiss stock exchange after more than a decade of being a private company.
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German publishing company Bertelsmann returned to the euro corporate bond market on Tuesday to re-market a deal it had pulled in May after setting the spread. This time the issuer priced the transaction at what was seen as a more realistic spread, but the high premium was in part due to the illiquidity of the secondary curve.
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Karel Lannoo, the chief executive of the Centre for European Policy Studies, indicated that he was optimistic about the prospects of an equivalency agreement on the oversight of clearing houses between the United Kingdom and EU 27 after Brexit.
