Europe

Greece sold the first and only public sector benchmark deal of the week on Wednesday. However, issuers are preparing to return in force in euros and dollars next week, according to bankers.

Bombardier has exited Alstom, the French maker of rolling stock, having sold the last of its shares through a €506m accelerated bookbuild on Tuesday night.

Globus, a German family-owned retailer, has launched a Schuldschein, joining a roster of other retailers stocking up on cash in the market.

A €1.15bn block trade in shares of Daimler, the German carmaker, was greeted warmly by investors on Tuesday night and has traded well in the aftermarket on Wednesday.

The European Central Bank’s top supervisor has hit out against plans to implement the Basel III output floor using a “parallel stack” of risk-weighted assets, warning EU lawmakers of the reputational risks of diverging from international agreements.

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.