Europe

Bank of Ireland and Caja Rural Unidas issued this week’s only two covered bonds from Europe’s periphery, both offering attractive concessions.

Kuka, the robotics and automation company headquartered in Augsburg, Germany, has issued a €250m Schuldschein note.

After printing an eight year FRN last week, Deutsche Bahn came again this Wednesday with a €600m fixed rate offering that drew sizeable interest from Asian buyers.

DVB Bank reappeared in the primary market on Thursday, adding a €500m no-grow 4.5 year note to its senior curve.

The fourth quarter yielded its first great equity capital markets success this week, as Worldpay, the UK payments processer, completed the largest listing in London since Glencore’s in 2011. Olivier Holmey reports.

Landsbankinn walked away with €300m of three year money on Monday as Icelandic debt made a return to the FIG market.

Covered bonds issued this week by Nordea Finland and DNB Boligkreditt went surprisingly well as, despite being the largest ones on offer, they were the most highly oversubscribed and subsequently posted the best performance.

A second European issuer in as many working days has pulled back from the corporate bond market, blaming challenging market conditions.

SNS Bank raised hopes of more capital issuance when it named leads for a euro denominated tier two transaction on Thursday but the trade may be a tough sell.

Enexis, the Dutch electricity grid operator, issued a €500m bond on Tuesday and achieved a six times oversubscribed book, which syndicate bankers hailed as potentially reinvigorating Europe's corporate bond new issue market.

Bravida, the Swedish electrical, heating, plumbing and ventilation systems installer, closed the institutional book for its IPO at noon on Thursday, and was doing allocations on Thursday afternoon. Pricing is expected to come on Friday morning.

Dominique LeMaire is set to join ING as head of the bank’s new platform to relaunch its leveraged loan and sub-investment grade corporate bond business.