Europe

Gazprom made full use of its newly regained fully investment grade status on Wednesday to raise a larger than indicated €750m, flat to its indicative curve. The deal is the issuer’s longest euro denominated bond to date.

Swissport, the aviation services group, this week launched a €325m add-on to its euro leveraged loan to finance its acquisition of Aerocare, a peer based in Australia.

KfW built a towering book in the five year part of the euro curve on Wednesday with a deal that SSA bankers away from the trade said probably attracted heavy French demand. The agency’s choice of printing just €4bn from a book of over €8bn should ensure a tightening of its curve, they added.

A clean-up trade in shares of Veolia Environnement, the French environmental services company, by Qatari Diar, an arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, failed to clear on Monday night, leaving Société Générale long the stock.

The primary market was quiet on Wednesday, but activity looks set to improve as a trio of issuers from Poland and Germany mandated joint lead managers for benchmark covered bonds — to be issued in euros and sterling on Thursday.

Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical company, priced on Wednesday the largest corporate bond deal so far in 2018, an €8bn six-tranche deal. The company regularly uses a multi-tranche approach to the market, but this was its largest deal so far in any currency.

The European Covered Bond Council (ECBC) and Association of German Pfandbrief Banks (VDP) have given a guarded welcome to the European Commission’s proposed covered bond directive, but analysts have raised a number of questions.

Royal Bank of Scotland and Bank of Montreal were offering investors sterling debt on Wednesday, as some analysts said that credit spread widening had made bonds in the currency appear cheap.

DBS Group announced a mandate on Wednesday for a euro tier two deal. It is thought a transaction would be its first in euros outside of covered bonds, and it would be the first unsecured trade from a Singaporean financial institution in euros in more than 10 years.

Citigroup and Svenska Handelsbanken were both offering senior bonds in euros on Wednesday, as bankers started to question whether the primary market could continue to support large volumes of new issuance.

The heads of Gemini, the digital asset exchange, have put forward a proposal for cryptocurrency spot markets to regulate themselves, and appear to have gained approval from a top derivatives regulator.

Gazprom opened books on an eight year euro transaction on Wednesday, having recently regained three investment grade ratings for the first time in several years.