Europe

Agence Française de Développement has passed its first capital markets test since asking for permission to change its banking licence, raising €1bn with a 15 year deal on Wednesday. The choice of tenor may have helped alleviate any immediate problems over its status switch, said a person close to the deal.

David Lester, London Stock Exchange Group’s chief strategy officer, has departed the company.

So far this week, euro corporate bond investors have had to choose between three tranches from an individual issuer. On Wednesday, they had a choice of three issuers, with different ratings and offering different tenors.

Société Générale raised £42.8m by selling its last shares in TBC Bank Group, the London-listed Georgian lender, on Tuesday night, after pricing the shares at a 6.6% discount.

DG Hyp and WL Bank are pushing ahead with merger plans in a move that will create one of the largest Pfandbrief issuers. The merger follows a series of other Pfandbrief mergers, new entrants and wind-downs.

Buyers considering Klöckner Pentaplast’s €1.6bn loan and Manutencoop's high yield bonds forced the issuers to sweeten terms this week, in a now rare sight in the leveraged finance market.

Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) opened books on its first new style additional tier one (AT1) deal on Wednesday, as the market looked to shake off the first signs of tapering plans from the European Central Bank (ECB).

The UK’s eighth largest restaurant chain, Wagamama, sold £225m of new bonds on Wednesday, as it plans to call its debut bond and make savings in a sterling market awash with demand.

The Dutch government sold its second block of shares in ABN Amro on Tuesday night at a higher price and a tighter discount than its first, in an extremely well-received €1.5bn transaction.

Andorra Banc Agricol Reig S.A. (Andbank) has mandated JP Morgan for a roadshow ahead of its first covered bond. The deal will not fall within a legal covered bond framework.

Strong support from IG accounts had enabled Polish utility company Tauron Polska Energia to tighten guidance to 165bp, plus or minus 2bp, for its windy but not green 10 year note on Tuesday morning.

Russia’s EuroChem once again appeared to prove on Monday that it can squeeze bond investors for every last basis point and get away with it, but one of the bookrunners ended up owning up to half of the deal.