Europe

The likely return of a rare sovereign issuer next week will break the silence in an otherwise quiet market for SSAs in euros, after there were just a smattering of German Lander trades this week. Meanwhile, investors believe that the rising interest rate cycle in the US could have a knock-on benefit for euro borrowers.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group has appointed Alice Gastaldi to its leveraged finance division, the bank said on Thursday. She had been working at UniCredit for almost eight years.

The euro high yield pipeline unveiled a battery of deals this week, six of them with ratings below double-B. The largest came from French frozen food retailer Picard Surgelés, which will refinance over €1bn of existing debt and pay a dividend to its private equity sponsors.

Repricings and refinancings have dominated this year’s leveraged loan issuance. This week, Apcoa added one more such deal. But investors proved they can still discriminate, as House of HR had to sweeten the terms of its new refinancing loan.

Alpha Bank has structured a newly rated covered bond programme in soft bullet format. The move is in contrast to its Greek peers, which have all recently issued from conditional pass through (CPT) programmes.

Austrian oil and gas company OMV discovered on Thursday that investors are far from finished with the investment grade corporate bond market in 2017. The strength of demand for its new nine year deal resulted in the company printing its largest ever bond.

Euro high yield bond buyers caught sight of a rare two digit coupon this week. Perstorp, the Swedish speciality chemicals group, priced its subordinated note with a 10% coupon.

Deutsche Post DHL Group secured excellent terms on Wednesday when it issued a €1bn convertible bond at a negative yield, despite investors having been distracted by a collapse in the share and bond prices of equity-linked regular Steinhoff International on the same day.

South Africa’s second largest private hospital operator Life Healthcare group has signed a £350m syndicated loan to refinance its acquisition of UK-based Alliance Medical group last year.

In feedback to UK insurers after a stress test this week, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) was mostly positive about the sector but suggested they could improve their analysis of basic own funds under Solvency II.

Lloyds sold two tranches of holding company level senior debt in the yen market on Thursday, including a rare and tightly priced six year portion.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China sold a dual-tranche floating rate transaction on Wednesday, getting significant interest from western accounts as it used its London arm as the issuing vehicle.