Europe

Deutsche Bank launched its first euro additional tier one (AT1) in about seven years this week, taking advantage of an impressive first quarter performance to raise €1.25bn of capital from €6bn of demand.

DNB Boligkreditt issued a €1bn seven year covered bond at flat to fair value with strong demand on Wednesday, providing encouragement for Sparebank 1 Boligkreddit (Spabol) which mandated leads for a follow-on 10 year Norwegian covered bond.

Pepco, the retail holding company that owns Poundland, has fixed the price range for its IPO on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, valuing the company at Z21.85bn-Z26.45bn (€4.8bn-€5.8bn).

Market participants on Wednesday called the removal of Andriy Kobolyev as CEO of Naftogaz last week “disheartening”. The Ukrainian government’s meddling in the state-run energy company casts doubt on its commitment to IMF-mandated reform of corporate governance and will weaken Naftogaz’s ability to return to the bond market.

A consortium of shareholders in Delivery Hero, which had acquired a stake in the company following its acquisition of South Korean tech firm Woowa Brothers, sold a 9.8m share block in the German food delivery company on Tuesday night.

Nationwide Building Society made a small piece of history in the covered bond market last week. The UK building society printed the first covered deal in euros from a UK bank since Brexit. It was also the issuer's first 20 year and the first covered bond in that maturity from anywhere outside the eurozone. Senior funding manager, Krishan Hirani, spoke to GlobalCapital about the genesis of the deal.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress Nordic agencies have made in their funding programmes in early May.

Ares Management has raised a colossal €11bn for its new European direct lending fund, but firms whose investments hit the skids through the pandemic may not find it quite so easy.

Bank of America has hired a managing director from Goldman Sachs to help lead a new team in its UK investment banking division that aims to increase the bank’s coverage of private and emerging growth companies.

The Pfandbrief market is in the middle of a tumultuous year which includes not only the adoption of the EU's Covered Bond Directive but also digesting the bloc's Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities. Of course, this is all happening against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns, which have hit the commercial real estate market that underpins much of the product. Jens Tolckmitt, chief executive of the Association of German Pfandbriefbanks (vdp), spoke to GlobalCapital about how the market has coped.

Greece was the only public sector borrower to announce a new benchmark transaction on Tuesday, picking banks to lead a new five year syndicated deal.

DNB Boligkreditt took advantage of strong market conditions to mandate leads for its second covered bond of the year on Tuesday.