Europe

The European high yield bond pipeline this week brought €1bn of single-B rated offerings in euros and sterling from new issuers, giving hope to those working for a bigger borrower base for the market.

Ineos, the Anglo-Swiss chemicals manufacturer, cut costs on its term loans for the second time this year on Tuesday, after S&P joined Moody's in upgrading the rating of the new facility on Monday.

Korean Housing and Finance Corporation (KHFC) has opened order books in dollars, Muenchener Hypothekenbank (MuHyp) is set to price a small Swiss Franc deal and Piraeus Bank has finalised terms for its floating rate bond that was mainly placed with supranationals.

With the benchmark corporate bond market pausing ahead of Thursday’s European Central Bank meeting, Deutsche Bank has sold its second sole-led sub-benchmark deal of the week — a €150m 10 year new issue for the property subsidiary of Casino, the French retailer.

Poland’s Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK) printed a €750m long 10 year bond on Tuesday from a book of more than €1.1bn and with only a 3bp new issue premium.

Deutsche Hypo has mandated leads to market its inaugural green Pfandbrief, taking the number of German green covered bond issuers to two. But since the bank could be soon bought by the only other green Pfandbrief issuer, the universe might well return to one.

Russian gold miner Petropavlovsk has mandated four banks for its debut in the international bond markets, a dollar benchmark.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) resumed trading on the Borsa Italiana this week, with its shares opening more than 35% below the level at which the Italian state recapitalised the bank.

Corporate debt investors appear to believe they know what the European Central Bank is going to do on Thursday, and that they like it.

A position paper detailing a new unified approach to impact reporting by Nordic public sector green bond issuers has been welcomed by investors, who hailed its broad scope and detailed methodology as an important development for the market.

ABH Financial, the holding company of Russian issuer Alfa Bank, returned to the Swiss franc market on Tuesday, with a refinancing of a Sfr85m ($85.6m) January 2018 that almost doubled the size of the original issue. The transaction came just days after Russian investment company 01 Properties pulled a debut deal after finding insufficient support for a four year bond.

The European Commission officially announced on Tuesday that it will withdraw its “proposal for a regulation on structural measures improving the resilience of EU credit conditions”, also known as “Banking Structural Reform”.