Europe
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The Republic of Lithuania made fools of market doubters on Thursday, slapping down a long end euro trade with its lowest spread in a decade and a bigger than expected size of €450m. The deal sets a strong tone for the three known CEE sovereigns in the pipeline. -
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Several new avenues for commodities traders have opened up through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, with trading in the first European Union wheat futures contracts beginning this week and an October rollout slated for the first exchange-traded precious metals spread and ratio futures contracts.
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The Autorité des Marchés Financiers, the French securities regulator, has set out its approach to new rules on research, introduced as part of the MiFID II package, which could see the volume of sellside research slashed. The French proposals could set the tone for the rest of Europe’s regulators, ahead of implementation of the rules at the beginning of 2018 — but it still leave questions hanging over fixed income.
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It is open season for repricings in the levloan market and lenders are feeling the squeeze. Two firms, one Austrian and one US, launched requests on Wednesday. They followed SIG Combibloc and Ineos Styrolution’s lead in exploiting ever friendlier conditions for issuers looking for cheaper debt, writes Max Bower.
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With additional tier one (AT1) issuance volumes at record lows, yield-strapped investors are so thirsty for new paper that cash prices have remained steady throughout the week’s volatility.
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The grins on the faces of Werner Baumann and Hugh Grant, chief executives of Bayer and Monsanto, look genuine enough. The deal they have struck could catapult Baumann to head of the world’s leading agribusiness company and net Grant a reported $226m.
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Swiss Life brought a perpetual subordinated deal to the euro market on Thursday, finding little trouble in the primary market despite the week’s cautious tone ahead of next week’s Federal Reserve meeting.
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Credit risk has awakened from its summer slumber over the last couple of days with the CDX IG and iTraxx main index now trading 8% and 11% higher than their close on Thursday. While it’s still too early to see whether this latest surge is a passing event or a longer lasting trend, both indices are still below their 12 month averages and now trade roughly 40% off the highs set earlier in the year.
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Shares in Informa, the UK publishing and events company, closed 6% higher on Thursday after it launched a fully underwritten £715m rights issue to partially finance its £1.18bn takeover of Penton, the New York-based information services and business-to-business publisher, in a transatlantic deal which the company says will expand its reach in the global exhibitions industry.
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Deutsche Bahn was alone in the euro investment grade corporate bond market on Thursday, as it printed a €500m 12 year transaction on a soft day in financial markets.
