Europe

Tryg Forsikring found strong demand for a new restricted tier one (RT1) bond in the Swedish market on Wednesday, as it looked to optimise its capital structure in preparation for the purchase of RSA Insurance Group’s Nordic businesses.

Vantage Towers, the telecoms towers unit of Vodafone, has launched its long-awaited flotation on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, having announced its intention to float on Wednesday.

The outlook for covered bond spreads has improved following this year’s rise in yields, although there is contention over whether the short or long end of the curve is the best place invest.

UK Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has proposed a “British Recovery Bond” — a retail government issue that would be used to finance SME lending to help kick-start the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. It can be tempting to dismiss such measures as political posturing, but there are some genuine advantages to the proposal, and it deserves its day.

Banks arranging private placements in Europe have started weighing up bringing companies from the financial sector to market, amid a deal drought from the corporate borrowers which are the usual staple fare.

New sanctions from the EU on Russian figures following the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny are set to have little impact on Russia, according to market experts. However, companies withdrawing from the Nord Stream 2 project indicate a growing uneasiness around conducting business with Russian entities.

KommuneKredit mandated banks on Tuesday to follow its Nordic peer into the 10 year part of the euro curve, in what will only be the second public deal in the euro SSA primary market this week.

HSBC's global banking and markets division (GBM) plans to invest in Asia and plug more than half its risk-weighted assets (RWAs) in the Apac region and the Middle East by 2022, the bank outlined when reporting its full-year results on Tuesday. Meanwhile, in the final three months of last year, global banking revenues fell year-on-year, but proceeds from equities more than doubled.

The thinking that the additional tier one (AT1) market should go back to trading through its pre-pandemic valuations holds big risks.

The State of Baden-Württemberg will be holding investor calls this week to introduce its new green bond framework ahead of a debut deal in the format.

This week's funding scorecard looks at the progress French agencies have made in their funding programmes at the end of February.

EP Infrastructure, the Czech Republic-headquartered energy infrastructure group, launched a euro bond on Tuesday. By midday, books had almost reached €3bn.