Europe

Smurfit Kappa, the Irish paper and cardboard packaging company, has signed its first sustainability-linked loan for €1.35bn, at the same time as setting new targets to reduce its carbon footprint and water use and employ more women.

At this year’s Central & Eastern European Forum, Société Générale hosted the workshop titled ‘CEE central banks’ balance sheet expansion: a necessity or a risk?’. The speakers were Radoslaw Cholewinski (deputy head of fixed income at Pekao TFI), Martin Dolejs (portfolio manager, pension fund and insurance portfolios at Allianz), and Zoltan Aroksallasi (FX and rate strategist at Erste Bank), and I thank them for their insight, their knowledge, and their time. By Marek Drimal, EMEA Strategist, moderator of the workshop.

Anglo-German travel and tourism group TUI has completed its heavily discounted €544m rights issue, which is part of a bailout of the company.

Covered bond spreads are so tight that asset managers with strict mandates to invest only in this asset class, such as Union Investment in Germany, have limited room to extract relative value and post a better performance than the main indices. And unlike last year, when falling interest rates boosted absolute returns, the rates outlook is less certain.

The IPO of InPost, the Polish provider of postal lockers, soared on its first day of trading on Euronext Amsterdam.

The Republic of Armenia sold a $750m 10 year bond on Tuesday, which market participants said was “expensive” for investors, with a negative new issue premium of 10bp.

The Republic of Slovenia sold its longest ever bond issue on Wednesday, just three weeks after it sold a €2bn deal. The bid for duration was evident as investors piled in with more than €4bn of orders.

Huuuge, the Polish social and mobile gambling company, has set a price range for its listing on the Warsaw stock exchange valuing it at up to $1.2bn.

Richard Luddington has joined Rothschild as a senior advisor focusing mainly on sovereigns and quasi-sovereigns in central and eastern Europe as well as the broader Europe, the Middle East and Africa region.

Supreme, the manufacturer of liquids for vapes, has successfully concluded its flotation of London’s alternative investment market (AIM).

The IPO of Dr Martens, the UK bootmaker, shut on Thursday, two days earlier than planned after the company attracted heavy demand in its first few days of bookbuilding.

China Citic Bank Corp has raised $550m from its return to the public dollar debt market after a break of more than three years. The bank priced inside fair value estimates, leading to a large drop in the final order book.