Europe

High yield is humming in Europe. Four deals have been launched this week, with issuance set to top €2.3bn by Friday. Front and centre is Netflix, the US streaming service, which has come to euros for the first time with a €1bn 10 year.

This week, two large, highly anticipated Swiss rights issues have gone live. One to end capital concerns, and the other to finance an acquisition.

Private members club Soho House has secured a £375m refinancing deal from Permira Debt Managers, the latter’s largest direct lending deal to date, following its pulled high yield bond issue in 2015.

Senior preferred could prove a much more enduring threat to the viability of the covered bond market than the targeted longer-term refinancing operation (TLTRO) or the covered bond purchase programme (CBPP3).

Stocks across Europe enjoyed a relief rally following the victory of Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the French presidential election on Sunday, causing the blocks market to burst back into life after muted activity in the week before the vote.

French food producer Labeyrie Fine Foods both widened pricing and reduced the size for its €500m term loan this week, as changeable market conditions have driven a cheapening of several primary deals in the leveraged loan market.

Charles Wickham, co-head of loan capital markets for EMEA at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, will leave the bank at the end of April, having worked at BAML and Merrill Lynch since 1994.

Yapi ve Kredi Bankasi looks set to take advantage of the bullish mood that has followed Turkey’s recent referendum and plans to issue its debut euro covered bond and what will be the second ever mortgage covered bond from Turkey.

The European Financial Stability Facility on Tuesday priced a dual tranche deal that bankers are describing as possibly its greatest ever, laying to rest some of its other long dated trades this year that drew criticism. A pair of other issuers have also hit screens in a euro market enjoying what one syndicate head called “probably the best conditions we’ve seen in months”.

UniCredit subsidiary, HVB, issued a tightly priced euro Pfandbrief at the long end of the curve on Tuesday, while Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (Pbb) issued at the short end in dollars but paid up for the privilege compared to what it would have cost in euros.

Netflix is issuing its first bond in euros. It's a high yield bond, but not as we know it. It is single-B rated but the covenants are investment grade — though Netflix's leverage is racy. To buy it, you need to be a fan.

French spreads have crunched in tighter after Emmanuel Macron topped the first round of voting in the French presidential election at the weekend — but don’t expect them to rally much further from here. With Macron now a shoo-in for the presidency and the European Central Bank likely following a tightening path, European public sector issuers might find that this is the cheapest level they’ll be able to borrow at for some time.