Europe

HSBC and Santander UK found strong demand for senior bonds issued from their holding companies this week, revealing an opportunity for more deeply subordinated supply such as Nordea’s tier two benchmark.

Saipem, the Italian oil services company, on Thursday priced €1bn of unsecured bonds in a high yield market still looking at a thin pipeline.

Even with the flood of bankers leaving banks to join the fintech revolution — in which it seems every move has some mind-blowing potential impact on the future of finance — former Royal Bank of Scotland banker Richard Bartlett’s move to start-up ‘social impact’ short-term lender Uberima is unique.

Nets, one of the largest digital payment service providers in the Nordic region, announced its intention to float on Nasdaq Copenhagen, hoping to emulate the success of larger UK peer Worldpay which was listed last year in London.

Primary high yield bond sales are recovering at an insufficient pace to reach last year’s levels, but corporates are favouring bonds over loans, according to the second quarter report by the Association for Financial Markets in Europe.

More than $1.5bn worth of block trades completed within the space of three days this week showed that the summer break in European equity capital markets is well and truly over. The deals included two big Swedish sell-downs by EQT worth more than $500m, and a Sfr539m sale of Straumann Group shares.

UK distressed debt buyer Arrow Global this week returned to the market, after selling euros in April, with a refinancing deal to repay in full its 7.875% 2020 notes.

Luxembourg-headquartered Armacell has launched a repricing request on its €445m term loan ‘B’, following Blackstone and Kirkbi’s acquisition of the foam insulation manufacturer from Charterhouse earlier this year.

After a strong start to this year some bankers are beginning to question whether the volumes over the remainder of the year are too optimistic.

The German lender has appointed leads to market its first senior unsecured green deal from next week.

Santander UK issued a highly oversubscribed senior unsecured euro benchmark from its holding group entity (holdco) on Thursday with virtually no concession, further illustrating the market’s desperate thirst for this higher yielding asset class.

Turk Ekonomi Bankasi (TEB) has signed a $567m loan, led by seven bookrunners, which includes the same margin ratchet as other Turkish banks Akbank and Vakifbank.