Europe

Hungary and Poland will not veto the EU’s budget, ending the threat to the bloc’s €750bn coronavirus recovery fund, after the parties agreed to a compromise at Thursday’s European Summit.

New MENA heads at Citi and Goldman Sachs — Julia Hoggett moves from FCA to LSE — LBBW hires Sim for Asia team

France and Belgium announced borrowing programmes for 2021 this week. France is aiming for the same amount as this year, while Belgium is paring back its needs.

UK industrial and electronic products company Electrocomponents is financing a pair of acquisitions with a £180m capital increase.

Capital markets professionals are resigned to a no-deal Brexit, after UK prime minister Boris Johnson and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen failed to find a way through an impasse in trade negotiations over dinner on Wednesday. Equities are set to suffer the most, and the ability of UK companies hurt by Covid-19 to raise capital is now in serious doubt. Sam Kerr, Lewis McLellan and Mike Turner report.

Direct lender Alcentra has raised €557m for its second European fund focusing on stressed and distressed debt. AlbaCore closed a new disclocation fund with $1bn of commitments this week, too. Both aim to tap into companies that have fallen down the credit spectrum during the pandemic.

Corporate issuers have been turning to the convertible bond market in 2020 to repair balance sheets damaged by Covid-19 and to take advantage of growth opportunities the pandemic presents, spurring issuance to its highest levels in years. Conditions are set for a fair 2021 as well, said bankers.

Qiagen, the Dutch diagnostics company, has launched the sale of a new convertible bond to refinance the unwinding of an older bond, set to mature in 2021.

Aveva, the UK software company, has completed its £2.6bn rights issue to partially fund the acquisition of OSIsoft a US real-time data producer. The deal marks another success for M&A driven capital raises.

Southeastern Europe's Montenegro sold a euro bond on Wednesday which bankers say, especially because of its timing, is simply another sign of emerging market issuers being enticed by the strong credit conditions on offer.

LBBW has hired Buck Khim Sim to join it primary markets team as part of its strategy to build up its presence in Asia.

BPCE issued a transition bond this week to finance loans made by Natixis, its corporate and investment bank. The deal gave Natixis a chance to demonstrate the value of using a green weighting factor when allocating capital to new lending, as the mechanism helped the issuer select its assets and prove its own commitment to sustainability.