Europe

Romanian utility company CEZ Distribution has signed a Leu675m (€152m) EBRD-arranged financing which is the first long tenor syndicated loan in Romanian new lei that the development bank has arranged.

VTB Bank intends to buy back $418.8m of dollar bonds and Sfr67m in Swiss franc bonds following the result of a tender offer that expired this week.

Swedish lender Swedbank kept Australian dollar supply ticking over on Tuesday, pricing its first bond in the currency since 2008.

Barclays has taken on a former member of Deutsche Bank’s FIG DCM team in Paris.

Nordic companies are showing a strong willingness to adopt the renminbi for payments which is a creating an opportunity for Sweden’s SEB Paula da Silva, head of transaction services at SEB, told GlobalRMB at the recent Sibos conference held in Singapore.

Next month sees the launch of the China Europe International Exchange (CEINEX), a joint venture between China and Germany. The exchange will develop and distribute offshore RMB including five new ETFS that are expected go live at the same time as CEINEX.

Equiniti Group, the UK share registrar and pension administration group, made a disappointing debut on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday (October 27). Its shares fell 8.5%, after being priced at the bottom of their IPO range.

ABN Amro’s IPO, one of the most hotly awaited flotations of 2015, has cleared the last hurdle needed before the deal’s launch, with the release today of an intention to float announcement.

Hapag-Lloyd, the German container shipping firm, is still hoping to complete its $410m IPO, but has extended the bookbuild by a week in the hope of gathering enough demand. The deal was shrunk before the start of the bookbuild.

Skandiabanken, the Norwegian online bank, narrowed the price range of its initial public offering on Tuesday, having achieved investor coverage at that level.

Eurogrid, the German electricity grid operator, swept through the primary bond market at pace on Tuesday with an €880m issue that showed there was life in the long dated market.

Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten sold its largest ever sustainability bond and the European Investment Bank added a new currency to its climate bonds on Tuesday, as a draft standard was launched for the market.