Europe

Société Générale returned to the green bond market with a five year issue on Wednesday, as the FIG market showed signs of stability despite continued speculation about the risks facing Deutsche Bank.

The cheerful and businesslike mood in European equity capital markets, despite clear risks of volatility in the offing, was highlighted again today by the launch of a €2.5bn capital raising by Steinhoff, the South African retail group.

SNS Bank will change its name to de Volksbank from January next year, leading to speculation that it could return to the covered bond market, though possibly not with the same programme.

Romania returned to the euro market with a reopening of its May 2028s on Wednesday morning.

UK asset manager Pemberton launched a £500m mid-market all-sterling direct lending fund this week, with one market participant arguing that opportunities in the space will expand because European banks are “the worst pricers of credit” in the market.

The ebullient tone that characterised the first three weeks of September has faded as investors begin to fret over the US presidential election on November 8, but there is still life in the SSA market.

UBS is seeking the agreement of investors to change the maturity structure of two hard bullet covered bonds to soft bullets with a 12 month extension.

Turmoil in Turkish bond markets put a dampener on Monday’s open after Moody’s junked the sovereign's credit rating. But with activity in the Middle East and, after a two year absence, Nigeria, the stage is set for a busy few weeks in EM.

Showing its openness to ideas from the European continent, the UK this week followed the eurozone into corporate bond quantitative easing. The Bank of England began its long anticipated Corporate Bond Purchase Scheme on Tuesday, and already it appears to be stimulating a flurry of sterling bond issuance.

Heads turned in the investment world early in September, when BlackRock published a 15 page think piece on ‘Adapting Portfolios to Climate Change’. In fact, it could be a turning point. If the world’s largest asset manager is taking climate change seriously, other mainstream firms, especially in the US, now have little excuse for ignoring it. Ewen Cameron Watt, senior director at the BlackRock Investment Institute, spoke to Jon Hay about why all investors need to be climate-aware.

A busy FIG pipeline started to melt away this week, as speculation about Deutsche Bank’s capital and solvency position turned market sentiment sour.

A flurry of equity-linked bond transactions were launched in France this week, including an exchangeable from Crédit Agricole into Eurazeo shares, a rare hybrid perpetual deal from Eramet, the mining company, and a similar €160m buyback by Assystem. And in Spain, Indra Systemas got cracking with its own refinancing exchangeable.