Europe

Shares in Amundi, the French asset manager, closed 3.2% higher on Monday after it announced that it had entered into exclusive negotiations with UniCredit to buy its asset management division Pioneer Investments, in a deal that could be worth €3.5bn.

Early morning volatility had largely retraced by mid-morning in investment grade euro corporate bonds on Monday, as market participants, for once this year, got the political result they expected from Sunday’s Italian referendum.

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 advisor with the European Banking Authority, at the Afme and VDP covered bond conference in Berlin.

The UK Debt Management Office has picked a conventional Gilt with a tenor in the 40 year area for a syndication it added to its 2016-17 funding programme after November’s autumn statement.

Schustermann & Borenstein, the German fashion retailer, priced a €260m bond on Thursday to fund its acquisition by private equity firm Permira.

Covered bond spreads of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena widened further on Monday on modest volumes after Sunday’s Italian constitutional referendum and the resignation of prime-minister, Matteo Renzi.

The spectacle of Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi’s political suicide did little to rattle financial markets on Monday morning, with any immediate negativity in credit and equity that had not already been priced in ahead of the country’s Sunday referendum quickly eased over by shorters monetising their gains.

The 'no' vote in Italy’s referendum on constitutional reform was met on Monday morning with a muted reaction in credit and equity markets but, with profound uncertainty overhanging the political situation and Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena’s rescue plan, analysts are not optimistic about the performance of the Italian financial sector in the short term.

Standard & Poor’s has surprised to the upside, revising Poland’s outlook to stable from negative while maintaining South Africa’s investment grade status last Friday. The latter decision prompted a 15bp-20bp rally in both South African sovereign and corporate debt.

The public sector bond market rode out the widely expected ‘no’ result of the Italian constitutional referendum on Sunday night, as bankers looked at a possible silver lining in the form of a more dovish European Central Bank meeting on Thursday.

The Tanker FFA Brokers Association has elected a new chairman.

Austria’s Central European Gas Hub has moved its exchange spot and futures contracts over to the PEGAS pan-European platform managed by Powernext.