Europe

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.

After taking an aggressive approach for its last syndication in January which resulted in a shocking loss of over €75bn of orders, Spain returned to a more moderate and conventional pricing process as it came to the market for a new 50 year bond on Tuesday.

The European Covered Bond Council is to launch its energy-efficient mortgage label on Friday with a virtual event. The label will act as a “lighthouse” for all stakeholders, marking a clear way towards a green housing renovation revolution, the ECBC’s Luca Bertalot told GlobalCapital on Tuesday.

A senior ETF manager at Invesco says it has become much harder for active funds to beat additional tier one indices, with the market having grown increasing homogenous in recent years.

Hydrogen Refueling Solutions, a French company that designs and manufactures refuelling stations, has priced a popular IPO on the Euronext Paris exchange, the latest sign that hydrogen technology is gaining mainstream enthusiasm among green investors.