Europe

Mediobanca is selling five year senior preferred Swiss franc bonds, one day after National Australia Bank (NAB) and Société Générale raised funding in the market. Cross-currency basis swaps are improving for foreign issuers in Swiss francs, and interest rates are rising — which means there a more windows for banks to place opportunistic bonds.

Deal flow in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is picking up, according to international loan bankers, with more pre-export finance facilities from Russia and some anticipated event driven transactions in the rest of the region.

SpareBank 1 Østlandet, created from the merger of two banks operating in the area around Oslo, has picked banks to arrange its inaugural benchmark bond in euros.

Spanish regional issuers are in discussions with the Autonomous Community of Madrid in an effort to add their names to the list of Spanish public sector SRI bond issuers.

UnipolSai Assicurazioni, the Italian insurer, is gearing up to sell a rare 10 year bullet tier two transaction, despite subordinated debt’s recent moves wider.

The Spanish National Court has ordered parties involved in a criminal investigation into Banco Popular to hand over nearly 80 related documents, including a full and unredacted version of Deloitte’s valuation report.

ANZ raised €750m this week from its first bond aligned with the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs), marking only the second such deal globally.

Investor expectations for the number of US Federal Reserve target rate rises this year grew on Wednesday after inflation figures for the country came in higher than most analysts’ expectations. The shift came on the same day that Rentenbank doubled its minimum size on a dollar syndication.

French car parts maker Novares has pulled its €260m IPO on Euronext Paris as global equity market volatility meant that the deal could not be achieved at a level which was in "the best interests" of the company.

Industrial conglomerate Melrose’s likely debt-driven hostile takeover attempt of UK engineering group GKN took another twist on Wednesday, with the target offering shareholders £2.5bn in cash over the next three years as it sells assets.

Bookrunners will start marketing the financing for KKR’s buyout of Unilever’s spread business as soon as next week, with the European high yield bond and the leveraged loan market both braced for supply.

In the absence of primary activity, the European Central Bank maintained its strong presence in the covered bond market over the last week by stepping up secondary purchases. At the same time, investors have avoided punitive negative yields by buying three year non-Eurozone bonds.