Europe

The London Stock Exchange this week moved to deflect a mounting list of European Commission concerns about its proposed merger with Deutsche Börse by saying it would consider selling off its LCH SA French clearing business.

Hong Kong-headquartered conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings is readying a global sweep of debt markets to raise refinancing funds, announcing on Wednesday morning that it intends to sell a euro-denominated eight year senior unsecured bond just hours after announcing a dollar trade in Hong Kong.

Steinhoff, the South African retail group, has completed a €2.45bn capital increase supported by one of South Africa’s richest men, Christoffel Wiese, and the Public Investment corp, of which €556m was raised through an accelerated bookbuild which ended up being nearly four times oversubscribed.

Agence France Trésor tapped into strong pent-up demand to draw a bumper book and print its largest inflation linked benchmark since the 2008 financial crisis — despite offering just a few basis points of new issue premium.

The euro corporate hybrid market reopened on Wednesday as Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg sold the second leg of its intended two currency deal, the first part of which was said by onlookers to have been subject to poor market conditions early in the week.

After a rocky beginning to the week that saw an offering from Lufthansa pulled — a rarity in the European corporate bond market — French transnational utility and service company Veolia managed to sell a total of €1.1bn in senior unsecured bonds across two tranches on Wednesday.

The dollar market for SSAs is set to spark into life on Thursday, with one issuer lining up a debut deal in the currency and another attempting to print at the lowest spread to mid-swaps this year.

Indra Sistemas, the Spanish software company, joined this week’s flurry of convertible bond deals on Wednesday, by launching a buy-back and new issue, rather like Crédit Agricole had done the day before with its exchangeable into Eurazeo shares.

BASF SE was on Wednesday set to become the first sterling issuer into the primary market with an outstanding bond that is already eligible for purchase under the Bank of England’s Corporate Bond Purchase Scheme, which kicked off on Tuesday.

German real estate firm VIB Vermögen has increased its Schuldschein by €10m, to €70m, after a small level of oversubscription.

Phoenix Group Holdings, the UK life insurer and asset manager, will carry out a £735m rights issue to partly finance its takeover of Abbey Life, which it announced on Wednesday morning, causing its share price to rise by 3.6%.

Finnish companies could be on course for record loan issuance in 2016, according to one syndicate banker in the country.