Europe

Toronto Dominion Bank opened books for the fourth three year floating rate sterling benchmark of the year and was set to price the deal at the widest spread of the year. Kreissparkasse Koeln has announced a sub-benchmark sized eight year Pfandbrief.

Zenit Sgr, the Milan-based investment fund, is working on the underwriting of a minibond by a listed Italian media company that could issue as early as February, sources have said.

Established covered bond investors are often sceptical about conditional pass through deals. The structure allows the maturity of their investments to be extended, perhaps by decades. But they could be safer than long dated bullet deals.

As Monte dei Paschi di Siena’s shares gyrated last week, losing up to 34% of their value, the bank received a high honour, for a second year running — top primary dealer for Italian sovereign bonds.

Sagess opted to sit out another turbulent day on Tuesday despite having a deal mandate out, but conditions were not sufficiently bad to dent a dual tranche deal from a supranational nor stop a pair of more regular agencies mandating.

Spanish low cost airline Volotea has decided to postpone its initial public offering in Madrid, making it the first ECM victim of this year’s heightened market volatility.

Non-performing loan ratios in all major European banking systems either improved or remained level in 2015, except for Italy’s.

After casting the net “far and wide” for a new chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, HM Treasury has landed on the Prudential Regulatory Authority’s own chief.

Austrian parking facilities developer Best in Parking walked into a frozen bond market on Tuesday with a €90m unrated bond, that was a tougher than expected sell to its domestic investor base.

The European Central Bank’s extra haircuts for covered bond repo, which took effect on Monday, could spur issuers to consider using conditional pass through (CPT) structures. The higher ratings issuers can achieve using CPT structures mean lower haircuts.

Two covered bond issuers from Sweden and Germany launched euro benchmarks on Tuesday. Both transactions were healthily oversubscribed, but with a wider starting spread, Swedish Covered Bond Corporation (SCBC) was able to issue a much larger volume, and tighten pricing during the bookbuild.

The treatment of senior unsecured debt in Germany and Italy has led to the downgrading of a number of banks' ratings by Moody's.