Europe

The Swedish krona covered bond curve has steepened over the course of the year alongside a rise in net issuance, with last month's volumes almost twice those of last July.

Peripheral European banks have dramatically outperformed their core European peers in the additional tier one (AT1) market this year, with market participants suggesting core names should therefore still have plenty of room left to rally.

Ukrainian steel and mining company Metinvest is looking to buy back a portion of its 2026 bonds after the company’s Ebitda almost quadrupled in the first quarter of the year.

The Emerging Markets Investor Alliance, a non-profit comprising several major EM asset managers, will release “enhanced” principles for green, social, sustainable and sustainability-linked bonds on Thursday in response to what it sees as a “loss of confidence” in the labelled bond asset class.

Fitch Ratings is confident that Greek banks will be able to fulfil ambitious targets on asset quality by the end of 2022, feeding more optimism into a sector that is already enjoying a boom in capital markets this year.

A group of pre-IPO shareholders have completed the first selldown of stock in Darktrace, the UK cyber security company, since its flotation on the London Stock Exchange at the end of April.

Virgin Atlantic is reportedly preparing an IPO on the London Stock Exchange, raising the prospect of a major airline flotation at a time when the industry is still facing severe headwinds due to the pandemic.

Banks are seeing light at the end of the tunnel as they emerge from major cost cutting exercises at the same time as economies around the world begin to emerge, erratically, from pandemic restrictions. Now the question is whether there will be enough capital markets business to go around.

The European Central Bank’s Targeted Long Term Refinancing Operation may never disappear, but the central bank will find it difficult to maintain record-breaking interest rates on its loans as the economy recovers from the pandemic. As the terms of the liquidity scheme surely begin to tighten, issuers will have a greater incentive to repay TLTROs and switch to market funding.

A rare block trade has broken the quiet in Europe’s equity capital markets, as a former director of Dr Martens, the boot maker, sold a chunk of shares in the first block sale since its IPO in January.

RBC Capital Markets has hired Citi's former head of structured credit sales EMEA, John Miles, to lead its recently established alternatives and private capital solutions (APCS) group.

City Electrical Factors, a UK electrical wholesale network, has agreed on a £150m five-year secured credit facility. Wells Fargo served as sole lender, as the bank looks to expand its loan book in Europe.