Europe

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.

Central and eastern European telecoms provider PPF Telecom has clinched the support of its noteholders for amendments to its bond documentation that will grant it greater flexibility to acquire assets.

Despite high inflation readings, the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee voted to keep up its purchases of UK government bonds at its meeting on Thursday. The MPC did offer some guidance on when the central bank will begin to reduce its stock of assets.

Depfa ACS has bought back its remaining Irish covered bonds. Ireland has now lost a total of three covered bond issuing banks leaving two behind — and they haven’t come to the public market for years.

The volume of retained covered bond issuance used for European Central Bank repo purposes exceeds distributed by many times in several countries. While this repo has provided a welcome boost to bank profits, it has come at the expense of long-term banking sector stability.