Europe

The fate of credit default swaps referencing Grupo Isolux Corsán Finance hung in the balance on Thursday, with the International Swaps and Derivatives Association’s EMEA Determinations Committee weighing whether the company would become the third of last August’s five widest trading iTraxx Crossover constituents to trigger a credit event in 12 months.

The Bank of England doesn’t often follow the European Central Bank. During the financial crisis and its aftermath, the Bank was quick to cut interest rates and implement quantitative easing. The ECB was still raising rates in July 2008, and didn’t start QE until 2015.

Sterling corporate issuers stood ready to take a lump out of their costs of funding on Thursday after the Bank of England announced a £10bn bond buying programme targeting their market.

Energias de Portugal made an opportunistic grab for euros on Thursday, proving that even as August begins, healthy order books and negative new issue premiums are still available for corporate bond issuers.

KfW was able to price through its curve as it reopened an Australian dollar bond on Wednesday evening Australian time.

Intesa Sanpaolo beat analysts’ earnings expectations for the second quarter and came out shining in last week’s stress tests. Though its pile of non-performing loans is still growing, the bank has escaped the asset quality and capital adequacy fears that dog Italy’s other large banks.

Vitec, the UK supplier of equipment to the broadcasting and photography industries, has refinanced its £125m credit facility, replacing one bank in the syndicate.

The UK’s Prudential Regulatory Authority has offered the nation’s banks a chance to temporarily free up some capital now used to comply with the leverage ratio requirement.

A pair of Turkish banks has returned to the MTN market after a 100bp rally in their secondary levels, marking the first bonds since the failed military coup in Turkey on July 15 and bringing hope that by September, public syndicated bonds may be back on the table.

Auto-parts business Adient on Thursday started pricing a $2bn cross-border bond, attracting high demand for a deal that could be the last high yield offering before the European market breaks for the summer.

The list of Norwegian covered bond debuts continues to grow with Moody’s assigning a top rating to OBOS Boligkreditt, the largest housing and real estate developer in Norway. The agency now rates 18 Norwegian covered bond programmes in this nation of five million people.

TSB successfully placed its tier two notes with new investors in the secondary market this week, in a deal that seemed to confirm confidence in both UK banks and the sterling market.