Europe

The Bank of England avoided bringing any surprises before the UK Debt Management Office sells its first syndication of the 2018-19 financial year next week as it kept its base rate on hold on Thursday. But some analysts are warning that investors may be overconfident of a hike later this year.

Pfandbrief borrowers rarely issue sterling deals of more than £250m, so when LBBW priced a £750m transaction with demand of £1.4bn this week, alarm bells were ringing. The astounding wall of money chasing the safest of safe assets may say as much about the state of the market as it does about the value of the deal itself.

The last two weeks have been the toughest in recent memory for emerging market bond investors who have seen their assets in local currencies and dollars alike take a hammering amid the collapse in the Argentine peso and Turkish lira.

Hastings Group Holdings said on Thursday that it was looking to shield itself from future interest rate movements by issuing a fixed rate senior bond in the sterling market.

Rating: Baa3/BBB-/BBB (Moody’s, S&P, Scope)

Members of the European parliament are set to shorten the clearing suspension mechanism proposed last year by the European Commission, according to draft amendments seen by GlobalCapital.

With Brexit negotiations still fraught with risk, DCM and syndicate managers are already figuring out fixes to make sure that their primary markets business continues to function after the UK leaves the European Union — with the minimum disruption possible for their mainly London-based staff.

A supranational dollar deal ran away with April’s top spot in BondMarker, outstripping the rest of the table by a good margin and clocking in as the third most highly rated deal of the year.

Interserve, the struggling support services and construction firm, has signed an £834m-equivalent three year refinancing facility, just months after it narrowly avoided breaching a covenant on its old debt.

JP Morgan's launch of an environmentally and socially conscious version of its EMBI index is well timed, as fund managers realise that dodgy morals can lead to shabby financial statements.

Daimler, the German car manufacturer, has raised more than €7bn equivalent from three different corporate bond markets within two weeks of announcing its quarterly results on April 27. The sterling market was its focus on Wednesday and it received as strong a response as it did in the other two sectors.

Avast, the Czech cybersecurity firm, closed a well-covered book for its IPO on Wednesday at what bookrunners said was an attractive price, but the stock traded down on its first day.