Europe

Groupe BPCE and Banque Fédérative du Crédit Mutuel (BFCM) both favoured the senior preferred instrument as they came to the market on Monday in dollars and euros respectively.

Two corporate issuers are making early moves into the capital markets this year without waiting for sovereign issuers to establish benchmarks, showing the strength of funding conditions in emerging market debt, said bankers.

Unione di Banche Italiane (UBI Banca) wasted little time in following Crédit Agricole Cariparma with the second Italian Obbligazioni Bancarie Garantite of the year. The relatively small sized €500m tranches were just oversubscribed, reflecting the fact they were priced deeply through multiyear treasury bonds (BTPs).

Barclays and Lloyds were marketing new senior offerings from their holding companies on Monday, having each already printed two transactions in the first week of 2018.

Petkim Petrokimya Holdings, the largest petrochemical company in Turkey, has received approvals to issue an international bond of up to $500m.

The poll is open for GlobalCapital’s Equity Capital Markets Awards for 2017 and we invite market participants to have their say on the best performers of last year.

Chinese financial regulators publish fresh rules on the bond market to control leverage, China’s FX reserves grow again to $3.14tr in December, and Bank of China completes a RMB salary payment for Chinese diplomats abroad after the central bank’s call to push for cross-border RMB transactions.

While the high yield bond pipeline has yet to reveal its first roadshow of 2018, two leveraged loan borrowers announced new deals on Friday. They are trailer supplier Dexko Global and Planasa, the Spanish berry producer.

Michelin, the French tyre maker, crowned an interesting first week of the year for Europe's equity-linked bond market on Friday with a $600m equity-neutral convertible bond due in 2023.

JP Morgan launched on Thursday January 4 the first European equity-linked bond of the year: a $350m bond exchangeable into shares of Dufry, the Swiss duty free retailer. The deal is designed to hedge derivatives positions the bank already held on Dufry shares.

The covered bond market looked weak on Friday with dealers reporting heavy selling flows as clients switched into new, cheaper bonds and reduced exposure in new issues where they had been over-allocated.

Three investment grade corporate bond deals priced this week, building strong order books and paying minimal new premiums. However, the pipeline for the first full week of January contains just one roadshow. Some syndicate bankers are not that surprised though.