Europe

The Bank of England will take over the “end-to-end” administration of the Sterling Over Night Index Average (SONIA) benchmark and implement key reforms on April 23, 2018, the central bank confirmed on Monday.

The price range for the €680m IPO of Aedas Homes, the Spanish home builder, has been narrowed to €31.65 to €32.40, the bottom half of the initial range. The deal is covered throughout that range, according to a banker involved in the deal.

French engineering services company Akka doubled its initial €200m launch size to just over €400m. With rising participation from Asian and European commercial bank lenders, issuers from the technology sector are finding higher levels of interest in the Schuldschein market.

UK grocer Tesco and US telecoms company Verizon both announced tender offers for some of their outstanding bonds in euros and sterling. Tesco is offering to buy up to £700m equivalent, while Verizon will confirm the size of its repurchase once it has sold new euro and sterling bonds.

Eurobank Ergasias has mandated leads for a roadshow, marketing a near replica transaction of National Bank of Greece’s (NBG) three year conditional pass-through that was issued last week.

Finnish property company, Mercada, was a lone issuer in the corporate bond market on Monday. Its €175m five year deal q was printed while issuers that completed roadshows last week paused.

Muenchener Hypothekenbank (MuHyp) doubled the size of its 10 year Pfandbrief tap despite pricing it at extremely tight levels, as SP Mortgage Bank announced plans to proceed with its second ever benchmark. Unlike SP's debut last year, the new deal will probably be priced through mid-swaps.

Groupe BPCE returned to the dollar bond market on Monday with 10 year senior non-preferred paper, in its latest sale of the instrument in a foreign currency.

UK-based private equity firm 3i has made its first investment in the US infrastructure sector, it said on Monday. It has acquired Minnesota’s Smarte Carte, an equipment vendor for the travel and leisure industry.

Economic growth in Central Asia is picking up but experts at the IMF are concerned that leaders are not doing enough to address fiscal deficits

The EIB is stepping up support for the private sector through higher risk co-investment.

This article is the fourth and final part of a series on China’s Belt and Road Initiative that we are publishing during the 2017 IMF-World Bank annual meetings in Washington DC. We have devoted two articles to the Road element, and two to the Belt element, of which this piece is the second and focuses on the western part of the overland route