Europe

Santander’s equity capital markets tie-up with Peel Hunt finally provides it with the entry into the UK that it has been seeking while giving the UK broker the firepower to compete with the biggest banks ahead of its planned listing, writes David Rothnie.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia's New Zealand subsidiary ASB Finance issued its largest covered bond on Tuesday, the first 10 year from New Zealand and the first covered bond from the country since January 2019. The focus for this week’s transaction was all about re-engaging with investors, said ASB Bank treasurer, Chandu Bhindi.

Berlin Hyp and HVB took advantage of strong market conditions this week to issue to highly successful Pfandbriefe.

Dutch agencies were active in core currency MTN markets earlier this week, including FMO, which sold its first currency-linked bond for almost a year.

A draft regulatory technical standard (RTS) assessing risk weights and loss given default of mortgage risk, which the European Banking Authority has opened a consultation on, should give discretionary power to member states, said a lawyer on Thursday.

Euronext has completed its €1.8bn rights issue to fund its takeover of the Borsa Italiana from London Stock Exchange Group. Investors oversubscribed for Euronext shares, as is permitted under French rights issue rules, and sources said they were always confident in the transaction’s success despite recent equity market turbulence.

Federal Reserve economists have warned of ‘financial stability’ concerns around the US treatment of foreign banks, after publishing research suggesting that some institutions were hiding assets in branches to escape closer regulatory oversight.

Market participants expect to see the end of “vanilla” deals in the European bank bond market, as tier two debt becomes the latest asset class to embrace call periods over call dates.

Shares in Canadian semiconductor company Alphawave plummeted more than 20% on Thursday morning as the stock began trading on the London Stock Exchange after its £856m IPO.

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.