Europe

Betting house William Hill this week was alone in the European high yield market for a potential issue of £300m of unsecured notes, with the UK’s European Union membership referendum an unhelpful backdrop.

The French government is expected to unveil a draft amendment to its covered bond laws, aligning the Société de Crédit Foncier (SCF) and Société de Financement de l’Habitat (SFH) frameworks, which should mainly benefit Axa Bank.

Spanish property developer Metrovacesa on Friday printed a €700m deal, winning a healthy order book that proved the European corporate bond market still has legs despite heavy supply.

The UK Debt Management Office has picked the banks that will run its next syndication, scheduled for the week beginning May 23.

This week's scorecard examines how a selection of French agencies are progressing through their 2016 funding programmes.

Mizuho has appointed a new associate director of EMEA loan sales in its London office.

ASIT Biotech, a Belgian company developing remedies for allergies including hay fever, priced its IPO on Wednesday, raising €23.5m, and made its debut on Euronext Paris and Brussels on Thursday.

China's central bank and finance ministry are set to reach an agreement over accounting rules for Panda bond issuers, according to a senior figure at the bank.

The pre-summer IPO calendar is filling up again, with some big deals, as Denmark’s privatisation of Dong Energy got formally under way on Thursday with the start of investor education.

Spain made a storming entrance to the 50 year benchmark club this week, lending weight to the possibility that the tenor could become a more common maturity as eurozone rates scrape along at record low levels.

UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo both escaped having to deduct the Atlante fund’s rescue of Banca Popolare di Vicenza from their capital. But the firms took very different equity damage from the debut deal, despite each owning a €300m stake. Owen Sanderson reports.

Banking is a game with rules, and regulators set them. That’s why, when the chips are down, they can change them to make banks look better.