Europe

IVC Evidensia, Europe’s largest veterinary care provider, backed by Swedish private equity firm EQT, has announced the results of a private equity capital raising on Tuesday. The company was reported to be considering a London listing this year, but this new raise might delay that listing.

Investec Bank plc, the London and Johannesburg-listed subsidiary of South African banking group Investec, came to the euro bond market on Wednesday to raise debt.

BPCE is planning to buy the stake in Natixis it does not already own, and is also examining splitting it up, placing its corporate and investment banking activities and asset and wealth management branch into a new structure.

Apollo Global Management has exited Watches of Switzerland, the UK luxury watch retailer, having sold the last of its shares via an accelerated bookbuild.

Deloitte has hired another former investment banker to work with financial firms, in the form of Guy Stevens.

Banks that mostly missed out on last year's trading and origination windfall would find it difficult to make up for lost time by leaning into investment banking; that ship has probably already sailed.

Italian prime minister-designate Mario Draghi must walk a knife-edge if he is to form a government and present a national recovery and resilience plan. If he takes too hard a line the mill of Italian politics will chew him up and spit him out. If he is too quick to compromise, the EU’s life as a giant bond issuer may be shorter than hoped.

Ever rising stock prices, despite the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic and a looming global recession, have prompted fears that equity markets are becoming frothy or even a bubble. In such an environment, many investors begin to turn to safer assets and Vladislav Barshinov, CEO of Russia’s GV Gold, is hoping that investors will look to gold as his company considers the possibility of an IPO in 2021.

The European Investment Bank became the latest SSA to hit the unusually popular 10 year dollar bucket on Tuesday, raising an impressive $4bn. The European supra was joined at five years by a jumbo trade from Caisse d’Amortissement de la Dette Sociale.

KommuneKredit dropped into the Swiss franc market on Tuesday to make its first appearance in the currency since June 2015.

Trading levels given are bid-side spreads versus mid-swaps and/or an underlying benchmark and bid-yields from the close of business on Monday, February 8. The source for secondary trading levels is ICE Data Services.

Retail shareholders have been excluded from a string of recent hot IPOs on the London Stock Exchange. This does little to dispel accusations that financial markets are the preserve of the elite.