Europe

A pair of large block trades this week showed the depth of Hong Kong’s equity capital market, with more than $3bn raised by conglomerate China Evergrande Group and European food products company Danone. Jonathan Breen reports.

Citi has added to its EMEA technology investment banking team with the hire of a managing director from Deutsche Bank.

GlobalCapital talked to Sarim Farooqi, senior vice-president and treasurer at Laurentian Bank, about the issuer’s recent C$250m five year debut covered bond, established under its new C$2bn covered bond programme, and what the bank’s next moves in the covered bond market could be.

Bart Van Dooren, head of funding and investor relations at Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten, will be retiring in January.

Two SSA borrowers landed in the euro bond market on Wednesday while a third lined up business for next week. Issuers may still be achieving good results but bankers believe conditions are turning bad.

Commerzbank has outperformed expectations by reporting a net profit in the first quarter of the year — even accounting for a large restructuring charge — as the German lender trims its workforce and sharpens its focus on the domestic market and German clients.

French cloud computing company OVHcloud has mandated banks for its upcoming initial public offering on Euronext Paris.

BCS Global Markets, the investment services division of Russia’s largest independent broker, has hired a new treasurer.

Danske Bank set a careful foot into the Reg S dollar additional tier one market this week, in the wake of a difficult trading session for global equities.

Virgin Money UK was six times subscribed for a tightly priced tier two in the sterling market on Wednesday, despite having offered a very similar deal to investors last September.

UniCredit’s German subsidiary, HVB, enjoyed a stunning investor reception for its negative yielding eight year Pfandbrief that was issued on Wednesday, thanks to the lack of supply this year, the small but rare premium on offer and the superb market conditions.

Shares in Montana Aerospace, the Swiss-Austrian aerospace company, took to the skies on Wednesday morning, the company’s first day of trading on the Swiss SIX Exchange following its IPO.