Europe

Conditions are far from ideal for the launch of Banca Monte dei Paschi’s €5bn equity capital raising, but the subscription period began this morning, with the original bank syndicate but no underwriting commitment.

The head of private placements at M&G Investments has resigned and is expected to take up a new job in the New Year.

More investment grade companies are known to be preparing bond issues than usual at this time of year, but January is still likely to be a muted month for issuance, say some market participants.

Fresenius, the German kidney dialysis group, has closed its second Schuldschein issue of the year, growing the deal from the launch size of €400m to €1bn, which brings the its total issuance in the market this year to €1.38bn.

The stream of dollar issuance from European non-investment grade companies may thin in 2017, market participants believe, as central banks in the US and Europe further diverge their monetary policies.

The technical outlook for French covered bonds is likely to support spreads, but this could be undermined by a more precarious political backdrop as elections draw near.

Swedish private equity firm EQT has sold German-based healthcare group BSN Medical to SCA, in a deal valuing the firm at €2.74bn, following Onex’s announced acquisition of Parkdean Holidays for £1.35bn.

France will aim for the long end of the curve with its first ever green bond, which it plans to syndicate in 2017.

UniCredit’s recent privately placed additional tier one outperformed the FIG secondary market on Monday, as analysts eyed a positive year for the asset class in 2017.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena has re-opened its debt-for-equity swap and launched a share sale of up to €5bn, as it forces a final push to avoid a bail-in.

Russia’s Alfa-Bank is planning a tap of its additional tier one securities and will open books on Tuesday this week, according to the leads. As the deal was sold mostly to Russian domestic investors, there are not the usual concerns about pre-Christmas liquidity.

Ukraine’s government on Monday nationalised troubled lender Privatbank, but questions are as yet unanswered for holders of outstanding Eurobonds which are expected to be bailed-in, according to frontier markets investment firm Exotix.