Europe

German robotics maker Kuka has signed a refinancing facility, ramping up the size of its syndicated bank borrowing by €120m.

The European Stability Mechanism has cut more than 20% from its funding target for 2018 after approving a request from Spain to pay back €5bn of its ESM loan ahead of schedule.

There is a hiatus in the Schuldschein new issue market, as the slew of transactions launched in January are weighed up and processed before settlement dates. Amid the calm, Schuldschein bankers are beginning to question whether the unrated bond market is a threat.

Even though the ECB's net asset purchases were halved to €30bn from January, the pace of covered bond buying did not change. Though the absence of a lengthy tapering period implies a greater cliff-edge effect when net purchases inevitably fall to zero, bankers were relatively sanguine on the spread outlook.

Moody’s cited Hypo Vorarlberg’s recent capital strengthening measures in a decision to raise its credit ratings on Thursday, adding that it expected the Austrian bank to convert some of its legacy capital instruments into high trigger additional tier one (AT1s) in the near future.

Moldovan agro-industrial holding company Trans-Oil Group is looking to make its capital markets debut. The deal will be the first ever from a Moldovan corporate, and the first chance investors have had to buy Moldovan risk since 1997.

Credit Bank of Moscow printed a $500m five year bond from a book in excess of $1.1bn on Wednesday, quelling fears of EM new issues shutting down in face of US Treasury yield rises. Domodedovo Airport looks next to print in dollars from the country while the State Transport Leasing Company has also mandated for a bond.

RusHydro, the Russian hydroelectric power generator, kicked off local currency Eurobonds for 2018 with a three year note on Thursday. DCM bankers said that internationally cleared local currency bonds will gain increasing traction this year.

State owned German rail operator Deutsche Bahn had a clear run at the euro investment grade corporate bond market on Thursday when it decided to sell its second bond of the year in the currency. The 15.5 year tenor the issuer opted for extended its existing debt curve.

The introduction of IFRS 9, a new accounting standard, brings this year’s European Banking Authority stress tests into uncharted territory, with market participants expecting the exercise to raise questions about the comparability and reliability of results.

GlobalCapital revealed the winners of its 2017 Loan Awards at its annual Loans and Leveraged Finance Awards Dinner at Gibson Hall in London on February 7. The full results are below: GlobalCapital congratulates all the winners and nominees.

A buoyant January in equities markets has been followed by a difficult start to February, with the first IPOs out of a full pipeline seeing some issues in marketing just as stock markets tumble across the globe.