Europe

Czech company Atrium European Real Estate is reviving its €300m bond issue this week with a shorter maturity, having roadshowed in June. The deal looks set to be one of the first out of the gates in the emerging markets this week, after a tumultuous summer for that asset class.

Croatia’s Sunce Koncern has signed a €73m club loan from mostly domestic lenders, as the tourism company restructures its entire balance sheet.

Emerging market borrowers and investors are returning from the summer break slowly but surely this week, but caution is still the prevailing tone.

Investor demand at the long end of the euro SSA curve has left bankers puzzled, with interest rates set to rise in 2019 following the end of the European Central Bank's Public Sector Purchase Programme.

European corporate bond investors were pleasantly surprised to be offered two new deals last week before the traditional return of the market following the August bank holiday in the UK. Those bonds did nothing, however, to curb their appetite for a full-throated autumn of issuance

Talk of the UK leaving the EU without a deal has given investors one more reason to shy away from supporting bond deals from the country's banks, during a busy period for new issuance.

One of the central planks of the UK government’s policy on how the financial services sector would cope with a no-deal Brexit could turn out to be illegal under World Trade Organisation rules, and could be challenged by other WTO members.

The autumn term has definitely begun in Europe’s corporate bond market. BMW and Daimler, which launched deals last week, may have been the scholarship swots who returned extra-early, but this week the whole sweaty gang of issuers is back en masse, and making plenty of noise.

German car leasing company Sixt has raised €200m in the Schuldschein market, part of which was sold through Helaba’s platform, VC Trade. As the market digitises, two platforms — one promoted by Helaba and one by LBBW — are pulling ahead of the pack.

Österreichische Kontrollbank mandated banks for a three year dollar benchmark global on Tuesday, with strong investor demand for the currency as a result of a lack of supply.

Finland and KfW received strong investor demand for the first sizeable deals in the euro public sector market following the summer.

Shares in IG Design Group, the UK maker of stationery products and gift packaging, rose 5.7% on Tuesday after the company announced its takeover of Impact Innovations, a US-based supplier of gift wrapping, which it revealed early in the morning alongside a share sale to fund the transaction.