Europe

Petrol station forecourt company EG Group’s credit worthiness has come under pressure after the UK firm announced $2.15bn of debt-financed acquisition plans last week.

Wabco Europe BVBA, an industrial equipment supplier with headquarters in Brussels, has launched a €200m inaugural Schuldschein. The deal is guaranteed by Wabco Holdings, a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital on Monday revealed that it had set up an algorithmic trading unit to take advantage of volatility in financial markets.

While market capitalisation weighted indices and portfolios have been incredibly popular in recent years, data show that their equally weighted brethren can have an edge with lower concentration risk and better performance.

The Frankfurt IPO of German real estate developer Instone finished on a strong note on Wednesday, despite the company having to bookbuild during an extraordinarily volatile week for equity markets.

Europe’s speculative grade debt markets began cautiously weighing the impact of a recent surge of US-driven volatility this week. While high yield issuers remain circumspect, leveraged loan borrowers led by French calibration specialist Trescal are charging on, confident that investor demand remains strong.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has said that bail-inable senior bank bonds cannot count as collateral, as part of changes tightening its eligiblity criteria. This could have a particular effect in Germany, where all senior bank bonds are statutorily subordinated.

Sparebanken Sør Boligkreditt has mandated joint leads for a new euro covered bond, the second five year transaction from a investment grade European issuer this year.

There has been no book update or price guidance yet on the €260m IPO of Novares, the French plastic car parts maker, according to a source close to the deal. The books are due to close this week.

Financial institutions are likely to be cautious about jumping back into the primary market this week, after a recent sell off in equities and credit.

European supervisory authorities jointly warned consumers this week about the potential risk of buying and holding virtual currencies like bitcoin.

LBBW has promoted Thomas Meißner to be its new head of strategy. Alexandra Schadow takes over from Meißner as head of cross-asset research.