Europe

Several notable event-driven new money leveraged loans are set to come to market next month, but for now there is only a steady flow of repricings and small incremental deals.

Suez Environnement, the French water and waste company, launched a €750m capital increase this week, to partly finance its €2.55bn contribution to the takeover of GE Water, in partnership with Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

France’s Unibail-Rodamco became this week the second corporate to sell 20 year debt in 2017, as investors declared the long part of the curve is wide open for top rated names.

Tech company Apple brought what has been called a “classic” Reverse Yankee trade this week, with the small spread between the issuer and far lower rated names that printed similar deals on the same day highlighting the premium US borrowers stump up for euros.

CVC-owned German retailer Douglas has agreed to buy Limoni and La Gardenia Beauty, two Italian beauty and perfume firms from sponsor Orlando Management. It said on Thursday that it may issue new a term loan to fund the deal, joining a list of mid-cap firms with similar plans.

Rating: Baa3/A/A-

Three of France’s largest banks took advantage of extremely supportive market conditions across global currencies this week, with each of the issuers aiming to issue non-preferred senior bonds.

Stockmarkets in the US and Europe faltered this week due to the FBI controversy embroiling President Trump. Yet the EMEA equity block trades market has been ferocious, with 20 deals, and bankers are relaxed about the threat of a market correction.

LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) achieved demand of more than €14bn this week for a multi-tranche bond to buy Christian Dior Couture, with bankers off the trade heaping praise on a stylish execution that wore skinny-fit new issue premiums.

Shares in Digi Communications, the recently listed Romanian telecoms and media group, closed below its IPO price on Thursday, after it confirmed on Wednesday that its CEO Serghei Bulgac had been included in a bribery and money laundering investigation that had already involved two senior executives and a former CEO.

Corporate borrowers gave bond investors some respite on Thursday after almost two weeks of frenzied feeding, but bond bankers say that the feast will begin again on Monday as long as the softer market stabilises.

US cloud and physical data manager Iron Mountain’s €300m deal proved European investors can give US IT company debt a chance despite some troubled recent deals.