Europe

UK airport Heathrow has agreed £350m ($429.6m) in term loans with tenors of between seven to 12 years. The deal marks the end of an active year of financing for the transit hub.

Two french firms, digital services specialist Econocom Group and research company Ipsos, have both launched Schuldscheine this week with initial sizes of €125m that can be increased.

Final commitments were due on Thursday for Euro Garages’ €1.16bn of loan facilities backing its merger with European Forecourt Retailer, while New York listed beauty firm Coty has commitments due Friday on its repricing and €325m add-on to its term loan ‘B’.

Demand for top corporate high yield paper stands to grow as returns are trimmed elsewhere, but research house CreditSights believes lower rated credits may miss the spotlight.

Strong demand from domestic Russian investors helped Polyus Gold price a new dollar deal inside its existing curve on Wednesday.

The Austrian lender’s first transaction issued off its newly set up covered bond programme was exceptionally well received, despite its small size and lower than average rating.

Aviva brought in €500m of tightly priced senior funding on Thursday, with demand unaffected ahead of the European Central Bank’s much anticipated policy meeting.

Turkiye Vakiflar Bankasi (Vakifbank) added to the recent flood of Turkish supply on Thursday, emerging with initial price thoughts for a new five year dollar bond.

BNP Paribas has promoted one of its rising stars, underlining a new determination at the bank to translate its supremacy in the corporate banking sector into success across all of its investment banking products, writes David Rothnie.

Goldman Sachs raised €1.25bn in callable senior debt on Thursday, showing other US banks that European accounts are comfortable investing in the total loss absorbing capacity (TLAC) friendly asset class.

Shares in Biffa, the UK waste disposal company, have traded flat to fractionally down this week, after it got its IPO done by cutting the price by a fifth from the bottom end of the range.

Alfa-Bank is marketing the first ever fully Basel III compliant additional tier one (AT1) trade from Russia and will begin investor meetings on Monday.