Europe

In its bid to, as one SSA syndicate official put it, "erase the ghosts" of its last visit to the far end of the euro curve, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) has spooked what had been a supportive market with its second shocker in as many attempts, writes Lewis McLellan.

The UK Debt Management Office (DMO) breezed through the final syndication of its financial year on Tuesday, printing at a record low real yield with its biggest ever book — despite a postponed start to opening books and murmurings about falling demand for inflation linked paper.

The new issue bond and loan markets will have a swathe of new standards to digest this year, as the FICC Market Standards Board hits its stride and produces a wide range of additional guidelines, to be adopted by its member firms in London and beyond.

Many are looking for it, but no bank has found it — does the point of non-viability even exist?

KKR has agreed to buy up to a 40% share in Telefónica’s telecoms infrastructure division Telxius for €1.275bn, adding further to a growing buyout pipeline in Europe.

The superlatives “fantastic”, “surprising to the upside all the time” and “huge tightening” were being thrown around about the public sector dollar market this week — the only missing ingredient appears to be supply.

US healthcare research firm Quintiles IMS launched a $3.065bn-equivalent term loan ‘B’ refinancing and add-on this week. By Thursday the firm had dropped the add-on however as its €850m eight year notes offering proved popular.

Rating: Ba1/—/BBB-

The Bank of England plans to start later this year examining more closely the banking sector’s exposure to risk from climate change. That means banks will have to start telling the regulator more about the risks they face and how they manage them.

Landesbank Baden-Württemberg and WL Bank successively priced the tightest covered bonds of the year this week and both were able to tighten pricing to a greater extent than any previous German issuer.

Ailing Italian duo Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza both sold senior bonds with controversial state guarantees this week. But Veneto’s deal was described as having gone “better than Vicenza’s”.

LXI Reit, the UK real estate investment trust, has completed one of the first IPOs on the London Stock Exchange this year, raising £138m ($173.25m) to invest in a diversified portfolio of UK commercial and residential properties.