Europe

Daimler and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg launched on Wednesday the first Schuldschein issue to be sold using blockchain technology.

Swiss life sciences firm Lonza launched a €300m debut Schuldschein on Monday, offering dollar and euro tranches to attract, among others, Singaporean, Malaysian and other Asian lenders looking to lend dollars.

Barry Callebaut, the Belgian-French chocolate company now headquartered in Switzerland, has joined the growing, but still very new, trend of companies taking out syndicated loans with margins tied to their sustainability performance.

Russian steel and mining company Evraz has dumped plans to raise $500m through a pre-export finance facility (PXF) and decided instead to tap into local bank funds with more attractive terms.

Daimler had the new issue corporate bond space to itself on Monday, but the deal it achieved was still a spectacular result for many reasons. Pushing out to new, longer maturities for the volume of bonds sold was an excellent outcome for one of the more frequent corporate issuers, and could support a more permanent long dated market in euros, writes Nigel Owen.

The drive to get companies to face up to the risk of climate change is gathering momentum. Firms with a combined market capitalisation of about $3.5tr have committed to support the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), which published its final report on Thursday.

Dan Martin, managing director and head of equity syndicate at Goldman Sachs in EMEA, is leaving the bank on Friday June 30 after 13 years.

The Loan Market Association has appointed four new board directors following its annual general meeting on Wednesday.

Covered bonds should help improve asset-liability matching for Andorra Banc Agricol Reig (Andbank), said its director of its financial institutions group, Paco Collell.

Bankers always expected June to be a busy month for corporate bond issuance after a quiet May and before the summer slowdown. Thursday ensured the pace of issuance was maintained with four issuers selling seven tranches.

A €179.4m loan to support Chinese company Aier Eye Hospital Group’s acquisition of Spanish firm Clinica Baviera has entered syndication with three banks at the helm. The deal is another example of Mainland firms’ eagerness to expand overseas, which is in turn giving the country’s lenders with similar ambitions a leg-up as they venture into relatively unexplored markets. Shruti Chaturvedi reports.

Order book momentum for the first Australian conditional pass through (CPT) issued by Bank of Queensland (BoQ) was quick to build when the deal was finally launched on Thursday, owing to the “eye-catching” initial spread.