Europe

NordLB attracted a strong order book and paid little new issue premium for its first dollar covered bond — also the first dollar covered bond of 2018 — a defensive three year dollar Reg S Lettres de Gage publiques.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Christopher Giancarlo on Tuesday criticised the oversight regime of cryptocurrency spot transactions, saying that a “rationalised federal framework” could be more effective at ensuring the market’s integrity.

Deutsche Apotheker- und Aerztebank issued a tightly priced €500m seven year mortgage Pfandbrief on Tuesday, paying a minimal new issue premium even though market conditions were awful.

MLP Care, the Turkish company that owns the Medical Park chain of private hospitals, priced its IPO on Tuesday after extending the bookbuild and slashing the price range.

Citi’s has named a recent hire from HSBC as its new EMEA head of high yield trading, three months after the dealer joined the firm. It follows recent new hires of two salesmen for Citi’s high yield team.

This week's sell-off in equity markets reverberated into the secondary market for financials credit on Tuesday — with some subordinated bonds seen as particularly exposed.

Digi Communications’ Hungarian subsidiary has refinanced part of a €200m bridge loan provided by Citigroup and ING in October last year, which was used to fund the acquisition of a subsidiary of fellow Hungarian communications company Invitel.

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) on Monday reported $4bn of outflows from emerging market bond funds since January 30, but even in the face of a global equity sell-off, the asset class has been largely resilient — for now.

Last week’s chatter in the bond markets about the US applying a new round of sanctions on Russia served to highlight how little investors feel threatened by this kind of talk. Now the US has to take action to affect Russia.

Unilever showed how resilient the investment grade corporate bond new issue market is on Monday with €4.9bn of orders for its deal against a backdrop of falling stockmarkets. Further falls in equity prices led to an empty day in the European new issue market on Tuesday, but syndicate desks are optimistic about upcoming issuance.

SMBC Aviation Capital has swooped into the Asian loan market for a $600m two tranche borrowing.

Despite a turbulent Monday for markets in Asia, Europe and the US, HSBC successfully completed the sale of 4.7m subscription rights for shares in Prisa, the Spanish media group that owns El País, ahead of its €563m rights issue.