Europe

Helios Towers, the Africa-focused telecoms infrastructure company, has sold a new $250m convertible bond to finance its pipeline of tower assets.

The European Union will establish a primary dealer framework for its €750bn Next Generation EU (NGEU) funding programme, which is set to kick off in the summer and will include the use of syndications, auctions and other debt instruments.

A pair of French agencies hit the market on Wednesday, pulling off impressive deals ahead of the European Central Bank meeting on Thursday, where investors hope to hear promises of increased support.

In one of the first pieces of public research on the nascent direct lending asset class in Europe, a report from Oxford University’s Saïd Business School has found that it could grow assets under management by as much as 50% in the medium term, owing to banks retreating from the mid-market and investors looking for higher yields from credit.

The Restaurant Group, the owner of numerous UK dining brands including Wagamama and Frankie & Benny’s, launched a £175m equity raising on Wednesday to see it through to the end of the UK’s Covid-19 lockdown.

Swedish pharmaceutical company Oncopeptides has placed Skr1.1bn ($132m) of new shares to finance the commercialisation of its lead product candidate in the United States, and the development of other treatments.

Bouygues, the French industrial group, sold a 3.23% stake in French rail company Alstom in Paris on Tuesday night, attracting strong demand for the deal.

While European banks have been ducking the covered bond market in favour of central bank liquidity, issuance from the asset class’s newer markets has also been light, but for different reasons. Attention is now on South Korea and Japan, which are seen as the most promising sources of new issuance, according to a senior S&P ratings official.

Swedbank got stuck at initial price thoughts for a $750m three year preferred senior bond in the dollar market this week, having been forced to drop a longer dated leg from its offering.

Mikhail Gutseriyev, the largest shareholder in M.video-Eldorado Group (M.video), the Russian e-commerce and electronics company, is seeking to sell 24.2m shares on the Moscow exchange in a secondary public offering. The firm says that the move should help improve the liquidity of the stock.

Latvia was set to sell a bond in euros on Wednesday, which market participants said was set to be priced very tightly.

Remo Ruffini, the Italian fashion billionaire, has offloaded €412m of shares in Moncler, the luxury goods company famous for its down jackets, through an accelerated bookbuild on Tuesday night.