Europe

Crédit Agricole asked holders of its sterling additional tier one (AT1) to exchange their bonds for new notes on Thursday, which will recognise the regulatory order after Brexit and will reset the debt to pay to a rate based on Sonia rather than Libor.

Russia launched its first international bond of the year on Thursday, which some have labelled as a show of strength by the sanction-hit country. Market participants are now debating which investors will end up buying the trade.

French hotel landlord Convivio Hotels has launched a €250m rights issue ahead of the reopening of EU countries to foreign tourists this summer.

Spreads in the European sovereign, supranational, agency sector moved wider on Wednesday in the wake of the European Union’s deal with the Street accounting for most of the flows.But with Bund yields expected to stabilise soon spreads should consolidate, believed several traders.

Two SSA issuers were expected to follow Tuesday’s outing in euros from the EU, but only one elected to brave the market on Wednesday.

The SSA sterling market has enjoyed its busiest week for two months, with three borrowers coming to market. More could be set to follow if conditions remain tranquil.

French technology manufacturer Mersen has sold US private placements, according to market sources. Investors are expecting more European corporates to tap the market in the coming months.

National Bank Trust, the bad bank set up by the Russian government after the financial crisis, has raised Rb50.2bn ($681m) by selling shares in VTB Bank, one of Russia’s largest banking groups.

Tuesday’s deals from UOB and Raiffeisen-Landesbank Steiermark provided a wake-up call to the covered bond market that showed, no matter how strong the technical factors keeping pricing tight, it is not insulated from the rates market. A readjustment at the ultra-long end of the curve was overdue, said bankers, and they expect issuers to print shorter deals from now on.

Suse, the German software company, was trading just above its IPO price on its first day of trading on the Frankfurt stock exchange, a success for the company given the volatility in European equity markets.

Arçelik, the Turkish household appliance manufacturer that owns Beko and Grundig, is set to make its mark in the green bond market. The deal, some say, will be a test of investor appetite for Turkish corporate paper, which so far has been strong, despite the heightened volatility affecting the country in the first four months of the year.

The European Central Bank issued several warnings about the banking sector in its Financial Stability Review (FSR) this week, as it drew attention to corporate zombification, a new capital markets exodus and an undesirable tightening in lending standards.