Europe

Even if the European private placement market develops its own version of the USA’s NAIC ratings, that will not make tougher credits more digestible to institutional investors. But creating a Capital Markets Union that funds Europe’s growth has to channel funds to riskier borrowers, and for that, investors must do their own credit work.

Nets, the largest digital payments processor in the Nordic region, has announced the price range for its Copenhagen IPO, which values the business at up to $4.8bn, almost double the price its private equity owners Advent and Bain paid for the company in 2014.

European Union wheat futures contracts began trading this week on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, with as much as 20,000 metric tons worth of contracts having been transacted on Monday according to the firm.

Danish payment systems firm Nets has agreed €1.4bn of loans with a new bank group to refinance debt ahead of its initial public offering. The loans are denominated solely in euros which is an increasingly popular currency for lenders, said a banker on the deal.

US car rental group Hertz on Monday opened a two day roadshow for euros to refinance part of the debt of its European division and fund its operations.

Froneri, the joint venture between Nestle and R&R Ice Cream, released tight price guidance on its €800m loan deal following a London bank meeting on Monday, yet market participants are sanguine on its chances of success.

Global Ports added on Tuesday a seven year bond to the pipeline of Russian borrowers set to bring deals this month, which already includes private bank Otkritie and commercial real estate company O1 Properties.

FIG borrowers looking to return to the capital markets may have to pay a little more for funding this week, as market participants tread carefully around the possibility of the US Federal Reserve raising rates in September.

ANZ New Zealand took advantage of a slight back-up in yields and a scarcity of seven year covered bonds to issue a well oversubscribed deal on Tuesday.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has begun flexing its muscles in Greece’s private sector after the country was approved as an EBRD recipient country last year by arranging a partly syndicated loan for Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation (OTE).

Morrison Utility Services, the first UK leveraged buyout to come to market since the UK voted to leave the EU, received oversubscribed offers for its £170m loan package.

When the Bank of England published the list of bonds it could buy under its new corporate bond purchasing scheme, set to run from the beginning of October, it only underlined how poorly suited the sterling corporate capital market is for extraordinary monetary policy.