Europe

The European Banking Association (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published guidelines this week for how financial institutions should make their management suites more diverse — but have declined to lead by example.

On Thursday, Northumbrian Water brought the first sterling corporate bond of the week when it announced a £300m 10 year deal. It is almost a year to the day that it priced an identical deal.

Should a bank making a loan to finance a windfarm have to hold less capital against it than a loan to finance an oil rig?

Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS) opened books on a five year euro floating rate senior bond on Thursday, after recent deals from Nordea and Bank of Montreal established a market for high cash price FRNs.

Henrik Ljungstrom has left his role on ING's loan syndicate and sales team after almost three years.

A glut of short end dollar issuance this week is set to ramp up on Thursday, after a pair of rare names in the currency mandated on Wednesday. The trades will follow a strong showing from Finnvera after the Finnish agency — also an uncommon name in dollars — printed its largest ever trade in the currency.

KfW has punched through its conventional curve with a dollar green bond that left bankers away from the trade a similar colour of envy. More SRI supply is on the way, after the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development hit screens for Thursday’s business.

Bawag, the Austrian banking group that has been owned by Cerberus since 2007, will attempt to go public in Vienna this autumn, with an IPO that will provide a serious test of the strength of investor demand for the European banking sector.

Both investment grade corporate bond new issues on Wednesday came from French issuers. Surprisingly, Total issued its first euro bond of 2017, while PSA Banque France sold its second.

Bpifrance Financement has tapped a November 2024 line for €700m, outstripping the size of the original issue and selling into what a banker at one of the leads described as an “amazingly strong market”.

Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) and NordLB have signalled their intention to exploit exceptionally strong covered bond market conditions and open order books for transactions on Thursday.

Deutsche Apotheker und Aerztebank (Deutsche Apo) issued the tightest German 10 year Pfandbrief of the year on Wednesday at a level that was probably through interpolated fair value.