Europe

The Association of German Pfandbrief Banks has developed a contract to ensure Pfandbrief investors’ priority claims on UK-based cover pool assets after Brexit.

Italian payments company Nexi has issued a new €1bn convertible bond to refinance its acquisition of Nets, a Danish competitor.

TP ICAP, the interdealer broker, received strong demand from its shareholders for its £315m rights issue to part-fund the acquisition of Liquidnet.

Apart from a few avant-garde programmes and players, green finance has only recently begun to be noticed in the short term debt markets, but that looks set to change rapidly. GlobalCapital spoke to Thomas Callahan, head of BlackRock’s global cash management business, about how he expects green commercial paper and ESG investing to develop.

Conor Davis is replacing Jim O'Donnell as head of investor sales and relationship management for Citi's markets business.

Oliver Ives, most recently at advisory firm Ondra Partners, has joined Deutsche Bank.

Martin Luehrs has been appointed to lead global capital markets at Morgan Stanley's Frankfurt-based broker dealer.

The size of a covered bond liquidity buffer that protects investors against the risk of payment disruption should be an important risk consideration, but there is no incentive to play safe as regulatory and central bank treatment of the asset class play more pivotal roles in valuations.

US private placement agents have struggled to attract their typical stable of well rated corporates to their market this year. Public bond markets have proven too cheap for PP funding to compete and the European wing of the market has suffered as a consequence. But instead of waiting for the scales to tip back, agents should find new European borrowers from the financial institutions sector.

It is the year of the ox in China and for equity investors 2021 is the year of the bull. Stock buyers continue to be optimists despite the economic ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic and are convinced that the spread of vaccinations across the globe will soon kick-off a festival of consumer spending.

European investors have wholeheartedly embraced the EU’s Next Generation EU programme and piled into risky assets in anticipation of a swifter recovery. But rating agencies are less convinced, warning that only the substance and implementation of national recovery plans will determine the trajectory of European growth.

Italy came to the market for its first syndication since a seismic rally in the sovereign’s bonds after Mario Draghi agreed to form a new government earlier this month. But despite the huge confidence from investors in BTPs, a compression of 4bp from initial price thoughts for a new 10 year led to a dramatic loss of over €45bn orders.