Europe

The first corporate bond of the year from central Europe received a warm welcome from investors on Tuesday, allowing the issuer — Poland’s Energa — to tighten pricing twice.

Russian Railways saw strong demand from international investors for a new Eurorouble note on Monday, with Asian accounts taking an unprecedented one-third of allocations.

Barclays was met with hot demand for a new additional tier one trade in the undersupplied sterling market on Tuesday, with the trade quickly racking up more than £6bn ($7.35bn) in orders.

Laird, a UK supplier of mobile phone parts to Apple and Samsung, launched a £184m ($225.55m) rights issue after it released its full year 2016 results on Tuesday.

The European Commission’s expert panel have a suggested a “common roadmap” which will require European member states to change their national laws to push capital markets union (CMU) forward, in a report published on Monday.

Investment grade corporate bonds roared into life with the busiest start to the week since earnings reporting season began and the primary market is only set to get busier, said bankers.

RPC Group, the UK maker of rigid plastic packaging, has secured a 96% take-up on the £552m rights issue it launched to reduce its leverage after making seven takeovers since September.

UniCredit, the largest bank in Italy, has formally finished its €13bn rights issue after selling the unexercised rights on the market for €15m.

Shares in MBB, the industrial buyouts company, closed 3.2% higher on Monday after it said it was planning an IPO of Aumann, the German engineering group, in Frankfurt.

The public sector dollar market is showing a few signs of life this week as KfW and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development picked banks for benchmarks, while the Bank of England launched its annual foray in the currency.

The State of North Rhine Westphalia will sell its third sustainability bond on Tuesday, following a pan-European roadshow.

Moody’s has downgraded its outlook for B3/B rated Croatian food retailer and manufacturer Agrokor to negative from stable as the company’s credit quality comes under siege.