Europe

Phoenix Group Holdings was unable to tighten the pricing for its debut deal in the euro market on Wednesday, a €500m long 10 year bullet.

The share price of Adyen, the Dutch payments firm, had recovered to trade at around €650 a share on Wednesday morning after rough week after investor sentiment seemed to turn against the stock after a large block trade.

The Middle East is continuing its domination of the CEEMEA primary market and even the Latin America new issue market is starting to see some action as a run of successful bonds in the last fortnight is helping to bolster investor confidence.

Market conditions have been shaky at times this year, and UK institutions in particular are under pressure as the country negotiates its departure form the EU. But Peter Doherty, managing partner and chief investment officer of Tideway Investment Partners, remains bullish on sterling hybrid debt.

According to a report by asset manager BlackRock, global exchange traded products saw a consistent inflow into fixed income funds in the first eight months of 2018. Within fixed income products, investment grade corporate bonds saw equally consistent flows, while high yield corporate bonds saw two consecutive months of inflows after six months of outflows. The inflows extend to high yield markets too, which is doing nothing to aid the fight against looser covenants.

Public sector borrowers were able to tighten pricing and achieve well oversubscribed books for socially responsible investment bonds on Tuesday, as investors took advantage of the flood of issuance in the sector. The momentum is likely to continue with more deals expected over the coming weeks, according to SSA bankers.

NEX Group is set to pay $50m after settling with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over allegations that brokers in its subsidiary ICAP helped bank traders in their attempts to manipulate the USD ISDAFix benchmark.

Private equity firms and corporates are unloading speculative grade debt deals with loose terms, but investors still pocket them this week, suggesting that their recent resolve for discipline may be short-lived.

GlobalCapital’s 12th annual covered bond awards took place this year at BMW Welt in Munich on Thursday, September 13. The awards reflected the judgment of almost 400 market participants, including 170 investors, who reported buying €100bn of covered bonds in the past 12 months and with over €600bn in covered bond assets under management.

The City has prepared as best it can for a no-deal Brexit, but it's not just the immediate effects it needs to worry about — the UK government’s disdain for the industry its Brexit planning will diminish UK-based financial services for many years, and the government doesn't seem to care.

Europe already has a powerful tool to deal with banks that fail to show they have the proper risk controls in place — it’s called the supervisory review and evaluation process.

Sulzer, the Swiss maker of industrial machinery, is in the blocks market tonight with a Sfr608m sale of its own treasury shares that it acquired from its former majority shareholder, the sanctioned Russian conglomerate Renova, in April.