Europe

Gecina, the French real estate investment trust, has raised €1bn after its M&A-driven rights issue was nearly three times covered.

Inflammatory rhetoric between the US president and North Korea failed to disturb rates markets on Wednesday. FMS Wertmanagement on Wednesday brought a tightly priced deal that drew heavy central bank demand — although it fell “just a touch” under full subscription.

US payments processor Vantiv has signed a $1.6bn term loan with a trio of banks for its £9.3bn merger with UK peer Worldpay.

After bringing the second largest bond transaction of the year in the US on Tuesday, British American Tobacco topped up its borrowing with a €3.6bn-equivalent four tranche dual currency deal on Wednesday.

UK fashion retailer New Look saw its bonds trade down after poor quarterly results this week just as fears mount of a downturn for the sector. That has left high yield investors divided about the implications for issuance from New Look's peers.

Grain and sunflower oil producer Kernel is in talks with international banks about coming to the market this year with a new syndicated loan.

The European Central Bank’s asset purchase programme is forcing down the yield on Italian debt, prompting Italian bank investors to reduce exposure to their sovereign’s paper.

Most corporate issuers have deserted the markets for the summer. Not BAT however, which has inhaled $17.25bn already this week and is now back for more.

ABN Amro said this week in its latest results statement that it was running high capital buffers because it still fears that the Basel Committee’s proposed changes to the calculation of risk-weighted assets could have a ‘significant impact’ on its capital buffers.

Turkish oil refiner Tupras has received approval from the Turkish Capital Markets Board to issue up to $1bn of external debt as the non-financial corporate pipeline builds in Turkey.

Despite the summer lull, large deals are still going through in EMEA equity capital markets, including one of the year’s larger European acquisition financings, which reached a successful conclusion on Wednesday.

NRW.Bank racked up another tightly priced deal for the dollar SSA market on Tuesday, as FMS Wertmanagement prepared a trade that bankers expect to attract a similar central bank audience. Issuers are enjoying strong summer dollar conditions, with swap spreads stable and US Treasury spreads attractive for the buy-side.