Europe

Spain’s borrowing costs dropped in five years but rose in threes and 10s at an auction on Thursday, as Italy shelved its BTP Italia product for the year.

Dutch chemical company Royal DSM issued into a quieter corporate bond market on Tuesday but encountered much the same conditions as those who jostled for attention on Monday.

The Republic of Latvia sold its €500m 10 year bond on Wednesday attracting a €800m book and a new SSA investor base.

The sharp fall in commodity prices over the past 12 months has placed the energy sector under increased scrutiny from credit investors. But it tends to be exploration and production firms, as well as mining companies, that have borne the brunt of negative sentiment. Utilities often benefit from lower prices in raw materials and their spread performance over the last year has been typical of the sector’s defensive status.

Statkraft, the Norwegian state electricity company, made a successful venture into an uncertain corporate bond market with a defensive €500m no-grow bond on Monday.

The Republic of Latvia sold its €500m 10 year bond on Wednesday attracting a €800m book and a new SSA investor base.

Caja Rural de Castilla-La Mancha (CRCLM) completed a series of meetings last week and has mandated leads for its first deal, a six year that is to be launched on Tuesday.

A measure of calm is returning to energy commodity markets after a series of wild weeks, but implied volatility measures remain heightened across the sector.

ING in the Netherlands has won the consent of investors to amend terms of 10 covered bonds from a hard to soft bullet maturity. The result comes after a number of changes to the documentation of its larger and more established programme. The alternative €5bn soft bullet programme will only ever be used for placing bonds internally, the issuer confirmed .

Everything fell into place for Glencore’s $2.5bn capital raising on Tuesday evening, as the company managed to raise its target sum with an accelerated bookbuild as a 9.99% share of its equity, just below the trigger for a rights issue.

The Austrian covered bond issuer has completed a series of investor meetings that finished on September 18 and will launch a five year deal on Tuesday.

Swedish group Akelius Residential Property on Wednesday sold €300m of unsecured notes with speculative grade ratings, entirely to investment grade investors.