Europe

The French government has sold the rights to new Electricité de France shares it does not want to take up as part of the company’s €4bn rights issue, though an accelerated bookbuild launched on Tuesday night.

Tighter trading levels for bank tier two in the dollar market could shed light on the future of the equivalent market in Europe. Stand by for spread tightening.

Neil Walker, non-executive director of LCH’s SA and Group boards, is standing down to pursue 'executive commitments' elsewhere.

Multilateral development banks will focus more on providing credit enhancement and support to help small, emerging market borrowers bring their green bonds to market, according to the head of climate change at the European Investment Bank. Meanwhile, a French region visited the green market on Tuesday.

The European Stability Mechanism returned to stellar form this week, hitting the sweet spot for euro demand and exceeding its first quarter funding target. Bpifrance Financement will look to follow up the supranational’s success on Wednesday.

Shares in Ascential, the UK events and publishing company that runs the Cannes Lions festival, closed 1.4% higher on Tuesday after Guardian Media Group (GMG) and Apax sold the last of their stock through an accelerated bookbuild led by Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), Deutsche Bank and Numis Securities.

Disability mobility provider Motability Operations Group (MOG) saw bulging order books for its €500m eight year and £350m 15 year trades on Tuesday.

Deutsche EuroShop, the German property company, completed an 8.7% capital increase as an accelerated sale on Tuesday evening, raising €165m to finance the acquisition of the Olympia Center, one of the largest shopping malls in the Czech Republic.

Italy drew a more than a twice oversubscribed book on Tuesday and priced well inside guidance as it brought its second syndication of the year, a €3bn May 2028 inflation-linked BTP.

Municipality Finance is set to follow the European Investment Bank into the five year part of the dollar curve, as a slight tightening in swap spreads failed to deter issuer and investor sentiment for bonds in the currency.

Despite the promise of a domestic tax rebate on on overseas cash holdings, US corporate issuers were heavy in the euro bond market this week, as borrowers front loaded supply ahead of the European Central Bank (ECB) monetary policy meeting.

European high yield bond issuance is being squashed by central banks and CLOs, with primary supply heavily concentrated on the double-B names that need the market least. Keeping the market healthy means finding a new purpose.