Europe

Plans for a loan to fund the €10.5bn purchase of a 19.5% stake in Russian oil company Rosneft by a consortium of Glencore and the Qatar Investment Authority, announced on Thursday, have left loans bankers in Europe baffled. It is not clear whether it will be syndicated or supplied by only one lender, and there are suggestions that domestic Russian lenders could provide the funding.

More than half of a global group of 276 investors surveyed by HSBC have a strategy for reducing the environmental impact of their activities — but 74% of them encounter barriers to increasing their low carbon financing, mainly a lack of credible investment opportunities.

Global political upheaval and rising dollar interest rates are likely to make 2017 a year of brief issuance windows in covered bonds. GlobalCapital gauged the views of a number of funding heads and senior bankers on their approach to the market for the year ahead.

Deutsche Bank’s Spanish subsidiary kept its commitment to issue around €2bn of Cédulas a year and on Wednesday launched a well-oversubscribed €1bn five year, even though the cost was much higher than the European Central Bank’s Targeted Long Term Refinancing Operation.

There is too much diversity in covered bond legal and supervisory frameworks to justify special regulatory treatment of all regimes and programmes, said Christian Moor, a policy adviser with the European Banking Authority, at the AFME and VDP covered bond conference in Berlin.

UK housing company Places for People (PfP) sped its sterling offering towards a Friday close with an impressive book this week, while the London Stock Exchange’s Order book for Retail Bonds (ORB) has signalled it is ready for more action early next year.

The European Central Bank announced a series of tweaks to its asset purchase programme on Thursday, sparking disjointed market moves as investors and traders tried to discern whether the central bank’s move had disappointed or not.

Corporate bond market participants reacted to European Central Bank president Mario Draghi’s monetary policy announcements with steadiness on Thursday but there was still caution over making a decisive verdict on the full implications of the bank’s decision.

The covered bond market remained in good shape in the immediate aftermath of the European Central Bank’s policy meeting on Thursday. Even though it had signalled an intention to reduce the amount of monthly purchases next year, peripheral bonds were tighter on the day.

The identity of the bank arranging a loan to fund the privatisation of Russian oil company Rosneft has loans bankers in Europe baffled, which suggests domestic lenders will provide the funding.

US data centre firm Equinix launched a €500m seven year term loan ‘B’ at bank meetings this week, following its announcement of plans to acquire a portfolio of data centres from Verizon for $3.6bn.

Apollo-owned French glass maker Verallia launched a €1.375bn term loan refinancing with a lender call on Thursday afternoon, its first deal since its failed €500m pay-if-you-can dividend recap offering in October.