Europe

Tobam has hired Frédéric Jamet as head of trading and co-head of research. Mr Jamet will oversee equities, fixed income, forex and assets. He will be based in Paris but will manage teams on the continent and in Dublin.

The Spanish covered bond legal framework is so vastly different from the rest of the world’s that it is likely to face the most severe challenges in trying to implement a harmonised European covered bond directive, delegates at the European Covered Bond Council’s plenary session heard on Wednesday.

ECBC speakers lauded the global popularity of ‘very trendy’ covered bonds, while general secretary Luca Bertalot evoked Christopher Columbus as a model for the European market.

A representative of European Member States and the European Parliament agreed on Wednesday to increase the lifetime of the European Investment Bank's European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) until 2020, with the aim to triggering a total of €500bn in investments in the EU economy.

Lone Star Funds, the US private equity group, has completed the first selldown of shares in Neinor Homes, the Spanish property developer, since its €775m IPO in March, and managed to sell a whopping 27% stake.

Kommuninvest is set to complete a trio of three year dollar benchmarks from SSAs this week, after Nordic Investment Bank comfortably priced in the tenor on Wednesday.

Tobam, the Paris-based asset manager, has appointed Frédéric Jamet as head of trading and co-head of research. He had been an investment adviser at State Street for 11 years.

ASR Nederland, the Dutch insurer, has returned to full private ownership after NLFI, the organisation that manages the investments of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, sold its final 20.5% stake via an accelerated bookbuild on Wednesday evening that attracted over 150 investors.

Mortgage industry bodies are pressing ahead with a pilot scheme to collect data on mortgages on energy-efficient homes, which could eventually help promote issuance of green covered bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

Extendable maturity covered bonds are looked on more favourably by issuers and rating agencies than they used to be. But some think issuers should have limited power to extend maturities at their discretion.

Since the market returned from its summer break, no corporate bond issuer had printed a new deal with a tenor longer than 12 years. However, that changed on Wednesday when French water and waste company, Suez Environnement pushed through to 15 years with a €500m trade.

The UK-based global mining company Anglo American recently returned to investment grade after over 18 months with a junk bond rating. On Wednesday it announced it would tender for four of its shorter dated bonds and priced a new eight year benchmark deal.