Europe

The smallest of Wednesday’s three corporate bond issues in Europe was Grenkeleasing’s €125m 5.1 year bond, led by BayernLB, Commerzbank and DZ Bank.

The Eurodollar corporate bond market, in limbo for more than a year, coughed back into life today as Nestlé, its stalwart issuer, returned after a long absence for a modestly sized issue.

John Fredriksen, the Norwegian shipping magnate, sold a Nkr4.4bn ($510m) block of shares in seafood firm Marine Harvest on Tuesday evening — a rare liquidity event in one of the few Norwegian stocks not exposed to oil.

Groupe Capelli, the French housing construction group, has raised €14.2m through a debut Euro private placement, in two tranches.

The recovery in Europe’s corporate bond new issue market continued on Wednesday, with three successful issues — one each in sterling, euros and Eurodollars. By far the largest was the return to its home market of Motability Operations, the non-profit organisation which provides cars and other vehicles to disabled people in the UK.

UK engineering firm Amec Foster Wheeler's share price bounded up 9% on Wednesday after it announced it had refinanced its main loan facilities with £1.7bn of new loans, reducing liquidity risk.

Swedbank was set to price a three year floating rate note well above par on Thursday, potentially limiting demand but showing the way for other borrowers in a era of negative rates.

HSBC followed through on its plans to issue loss-absorbing debt from its holding company on Wednesday, putting a big dent in its issuance targets with a $7bn deal.

The SSA market has seen a deluge of deals this week as issuers in both dollars and euros look to raise funding before the European Central Bank and the US Federal Open Market Committee meet in coming weeks, which could cause disruption.

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.

Three covered bond issuers launched euro benchmarks on Wednesday with the inaugural transaction from United Overseas Bank of Singapore proving the main attraction. Sparebank 1 Boligkreditt and Belfius Bank also launched deals, with strong demand for the Belgian deal allowing the issuer to pay an extraordinarily tight new issue concession of 1bp.

Santander Consumer Finance took advantage of relatively stable conditions in the Swiss franc market on Tuesday to print just its second bond in the currency.