Europe

Covered bond investors remain unperturbed by spreads to swaps that are at near-historically tight levels, as the relative values to government bonds and senior unsecured remains alluring.

A chequered history of debt restructurings and shareholder rebellions meant that B- rated Petropavlovsk was always going to be a tough sell. But a chunky 8.125% yield helped the issuer scrape together $500m to pay back more expensive bank loans, according to lead managers, despite the year end fast approaching.

Several of November’s IPOs in Europe have taken hits in the aftermarket, continuing October’s trend of recently floated companies’ shares trading down.

Société Générale came to the market with two tranches of senior non-preferred debt on Wednesday, in its fourth offering of the asset class in euros.

In October, German chemicals company BASF announced it had agreed to buy parts of Bayer’s seed and non-selective herbicide businesses for €5.9bn, all in cash. On Wednesday it started to fund that with a €3bn triple tranche bond sale.

BBVA opened books on a new additional tier one (AT1) on Wednesday, in a sign that the market was already entering its first phase of refinancing.

The chief financial officer and treasurer of Chicago Board Options Exchange Global Markets, Alan Dean, is due to retire from his post at the end of the year.

Proposals to review the European supervisory authorities were strongly criticised during a meeting of EU finance ministers on Tuesday. Luxembourg and Ireland led the fight against the draft plan, leaving France as its only supporter.

The Republic of Lithuania on Tuesday drew a combined €1.27bn book for its taps as investors rushed to take a piece of what could be Lithuania’s last international bond for over a year.

Corporate bond spreads may be agonisingly tight, and getting tighter by the week, but investors still think they can squeeze value out of the market.

There are now only a handful of live IPOs left in the market from this season’s crop, after several deals have been pulled. HelloFresh, EN+, SMCP and Aedas Homes have all traded badly in the aftermarket and just one new deal has been launched this week.

Public sector borrowers have crammed more dollar deals into Tuesday than are sometimes seen in a week. But far from suffering from too much choice, investors gobbled up everything on offer — and bankers expect them to do just the same for two deals on Wednesday’s menu.