Europe

After over a month with no French supply, Caffil and Compagnie de Financement Foncier returned to the primary market on Monday, respectively launching a tap and a new benchmark which both met with a strong reception.

Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas, the Spanish construction company, said on Thursday that it had received a 99.72% take-up on its €710m rights issue, which was placed without banks. But the market will have to wait till next week to find out how large Carlos Slim’s stake in the firm is now.

Read on to see how French agencies have progressed through their 2016 funding programmes.

Nordea issued a notice on Friday seeking the consent of covered bond investors to agree to the terms of a deed poll and a new guarantee mechanism that will align its Finnish covered bond programme with its Danish, Norwegian and Swedish programmes. Moody’s says the proposal will not affect the credit rating.

BNP Paribas reopened the euro tier two market on Friday with a sharply priced trade, the first capital deal of any sort from a European bank in over seven weeks.

Two of Italy’s popolari banks have registered to be listed on the Italian stock exchange and, with two others entering advanced merger talks on Tuesday, the country finally looks to be making headway on the banking reforms passed last year.

UniCredit was largely absent from the euro senior market last year, but, having successfully priced a new seven year last Friday, the bank’s head of group finance expects a busier year in 2016.

In this round-up: Hong Kong cross-border trade settlement fell again at the start of the year, RMB deposits were steady in Hong Kong but falling in Singapore, Brics New Development Bank will set up in Shanghai, and PBoC said a swap line with Bank of Russia had been activated. Plus, a recap of our top stories this week.

Santander Consumer Finance added to a run of FIG Swiss franc issuance this week, printing just its second bond in the currency.

Barclays' new chief executive is looking for a lot of leeway from shareholders. Selling off a profitable part of the business to double down on a less profitable line is a bold call. The market can't be this bad forever, but don't expect the dividend back any time soon.

Swedbank kicked off what could be a wave of FIG floating rate notes priced above par this week, protecting issuers from a negative quarterly Euribor rate that the European Central Bank could force even lower next week.

Russian gas company Gazprom has raised €2bn ($2.2bn) from Bank of China, marking its largest fundraising directly from a single financial institution and its first bilateral loan from a Chinese lender.