Europe

The dollar market was on spectacular form on Wednesday, with a Canadian province pushing out a rare 10 year bond, a supranational smashing its size record and a $4bn five year from a German agency.

The sterling bond markets has been charging ahead since the UK gave official notice to leave the EU last week. In the corporate sector Volkswagen returned to the capital markets two weeks after a blowout euro transaction for its first sterling denominated bond since becoming engulfed in an emission scandal in September 2015.

The corporate bond market in euros was still pumping out the trades this week, but there are small cracks starting to show in the market after a bumper March issuance window.

The loan package backing Ardian’s buyout of Prosol Group, the parent of French food retailer Grand Frais, is set to increase leverage at the firm to more than five-and-a-half times Ebitda, a level that one investor said was overly aggressive in the sector.

German government-owned development bank KfW has entered into an agreement with Eurex Clearing that will see its euro denominated interest rate swaps cleared by the Frankfurt central counterparty.

NLFI, the organisation that manages investments for the Dutch government, has completed its second block trade of shares in ASR Nederland, the insurer that was nationalised during the financial crisis.

SR Boligkreditt has issued its first Reg S dollar covered bond, and though the book was slow to build the issuer found enough demand to ensure the deal was eligible for bank liquidity portfolios in the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR).

Spanish car parts supplier Grupo Antolin found strong demand for its refinancing deal on Thursday in a high yield market where new bond sale volumes have dropped to less than a third of March’s €3bn average.

Austria's Erste Bank was more than four times oversubscribed for its second additional tier one (AT1) trade on Monday, allowing the issuer to move pricing close to fair value.

Norilsk Nickel printed a new six year bond 15bp inside its curve on Wednesday, but the volume of orders that dropped from the order book from the order book suggested that not all were happy with the pricing.

Corporate bond issuers in Europe were making up for lost time with a slew of deals on Wednesday, after a sluggish start this week with just one deal for Renault’s finance arm RCI Banque on Monday. Books are big and deals are tightening strongly in bookbuild.

Even as South Africa and Halkbank prove that idiosyncratic risks are ever present in in emerging market bonds, conditions remain beyond syndicate bankers wildest dreams. That is good news for the bulging pipeline.