Europe

Groupe SEB has set a new record for a French borrower tapping the booming Schuldschein market, raising a whopping €800m to help it buy a German company.

Advent International tidied up another part of its European portfolio on Monday night by selling the last of its stake in Equiniti, the pension, loan and share administration company, in a £43.3m block trade.

Spain’s construction sector has been a sore point in the high yield market this year, with three of its big hitters either in distress, debt restructuring or increasingly surrounded by accounting disputes and corruption. Investor adviser CreditSights this week said major shareholder families behind those companies bear some responsibility.

Rentenbank will sell up to €4.8bn of benchmarks next year, the German agency said on Tuesday, as it announced its funding plans for 2017.

Pfandbriefbank Schweizerischer Hypothekarinstitute tapped two Swiss covered bonds on Tuesday, in what was likely the final trades of the year. The shorter 10 year Pfandbrief tenor offered a 0.29% yield, an early Christmas present to investors forced far along the curve throughout the year.

Having issued twice in the Eurobond markets last month, Russia's Gazprom has turned its attentions to the loan market with an €800m four year deal.

French e-security and biometrics firm Morpho tightened guidance on its €2.1bn-equivalent buyout term loan this week, as the strength of the leveraged loan bid is still squeezing prices.

UniCredit will not be one of the Basel IV ‘outliers’ that will have to substantially increase its capital levels when the new rules come in, according to chief executive Jean-Pierre Mustier, speaking at the launch of the bank’s new strategic plan on Tuesday morning.

The European Stability Mechanism and European Financial Stability Facility’s joint funding requirement for 2017 has been driven up €7bn because of new debt relief measures for Greece.

Poland raised €750m from its debut green bond on Monday which was allocated 61% to green accounts. The sovereign claimed that it was able to print flat to inside where a new conventional bond would have come, setting a strong precedent for future sovereign green issues.

European banks may lose out on the chance to finance one of the largest acquisitions in eastern Europe, after Japanese brewer Asahi won the €7.3bn bid to buy SABMiller’s regional assets. The outcome could mean that only Asahi’s relationship banks get a piece of the action.

Investors greeted Crédit Agricole’s market opening senior non-preferred trade with more than €5bn of orders on Tuesday, allowing the issuer to bring pricing closer to its vanilla senior curve. Société Générale quickly showed it wanted to be next in line, in what is shaping up as an encouraging start for the new asset class.