Europe

Shares in ASA International, the Amsterdam-based microfinance firm, have traded up nicely since they began trading on the London Stock Exchange, capping off a largely successful vintage of IPOs in Europe.

Société d’Infrastructure Gazières, a holding company jointly owned by CNP Assurances and Caisse des Dépôts whose sole asset is a 24.91% minority stake in natural gas network GRTgaz, has issued a €586.4m Euro PP bond.

Italian electricity network operator Terna sold its first green bond on Monday and was rewarded with an order book that was more than 5.5 times oversubscribed.

Covered bonds from Italian banks underperformed those from lenders in Spain and Greece last week, although this may have partly been down to recent new issues offering significant concessions to investors.

Deutsche Bank’s additional tier ones soared in value by about three cash points at the beginning of the week, after the firm surprised investors by saying that it was expecting to make a strong profit for the second quarter of 2018.

As the trade tension deepens between the US and its counterparts, fund investors have fled to US bonds and equities, leaving emerging market fund outflows on the rise for the most part of 2018.

Frontier markets specialists Exotix Capital has made four new appointments to its EM sales business, expanding its coverage in four different geographies.

Akbank is due to send out invitation letters for its late summer one year syndicated loan by the end of this week, according to a source close to the Turkish lender.

Opera, the internet browser, is marketing its $115m Nasdaq IPO at a substantial discount to comparable web browsers in China and Russia.

Are professional codes of conduct shining lodestars for how to behave in financial markets — or dusty screeds of boilerplate that no one can remember? That is what a group of enthusiasts are trying to discover, in the hope that such codes, if used in the best way, could genuinely improve behaviour.

Solaria, the Spanish solar energy company, sold a €96.8m block of shares to fund the development and execution of its photovoltaic projects in Spain and in order to continue broadening its portfolio of projects under development.

After a strong start to the year, covered bond supply is widely expected to beat expecations. Prospects for the second half of the year will depend on how credit markets behave and how issuers consider refinancing central bank term liquidity. Given these large variables, supply this year could yet prove exceptionally high.