Europe

Athene Global Funding encountered slim demand after circling back to the sterling market on Wednesday, with lead managers citing a ‘challenging environment’ for new issues in Europe.

Tryg, the Danish insurance company, received a 99.7% take-up for its rights issue which closed this week. The deal will fund the acquisition of insurance group RSA’s Nordic operations.

Axa Home Loan SFH issued the only covered bond of the week on Wednesday, when it surfaced with a €250m tap of an old 15 year deal. The transaction underscores the impression that a flood of retained issuance used for central bank funding is negative for distributed supply. Yet, there is still hope that the situation will improve in the second half of the year.

NatWest Group is looking to smarten up its capital structure by repurchasing up to $6.7bn of its subordinated debt from investors, including two legacy instruments. The offer arrives a week ahead of a deadline for UK banks to submit official clean-up plans for their old-style securities.

Dufry, the Swiss duty-free concession operator, has issued a new five-year Sfr500m convertible bond to help refinance the Sfr350m three-year convertible it received in April 2020 following the initial onset of the pandemic, which caused a collapse in the company’s share price.

Belgian investment company Groupe Bruxelles Lambert has raised €500m of financing at a deeply negative yield through a new bond convertible into treasury shares.

A transition of the Spanish covered bond regime should be done in one fell swoop akin to a "big bang", argued delegates at GlobalCapital's virtual covered bond roadshow on Tuesday.

LondonMetric, the listed UK real estate firm, has sold £380m of US private placements, according to market sources. One tranche had a green component, which priced tighter than another coupon with the same maturity.

As emerging market IPOs continue to draw investors into countries many have never invested before, Turkey remains an obvious absentee. The country could be an EM equity giant but political decisions by its government continue to hinder Turkish businesses.

Tagging assets to liabilities is a critical exercise for covered bond issuers, particularly when it comes to their ESG paper. Start-up mortgage lender Perenna is working with Tao Solutions to create a verifiable audit trail with technology that automatically matches green covered bonds to the appropriate mortgage loans.

PensionBee, the UK online pensions provider, is preparing to go public on the London Stock Exchange, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday.

The European Union made a quick trip to the bond market on Tuesday morning to collect €13bn — €8bn at five years and €5bn at 25. It found itself selling into stronger market conditions than have prevailed for the past few weeks, thanks to the European Central Bank’s beefed up intervention. But despite the strong backdrop, the market is still quieter than expected.