Europe

The UK Debt Management Office has put out a request for green structuring advisers for the launch of its first green Gilt.

Investment bankers have piled up heaps of revenue for their firms this year, but their employers may feel the need not to be too generous with bonuses in the first few months of next year.

The sustainable finance market clamoured for a Taxonomy to tell it what was green. Now it’s here, many are finding the answers constraining or simplistic. Alarmingly, the Taxonomy is also perpetuating the very thing it was supposed to root out — greenwashing.

Kommunalbanken, the Norwegian funding agency for local governments, is reducing its 2021 funding programme.

Italian MPs are threatening to use a vote in parliament this week to derail a recent EU agreement on planned reforms for the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

Scepticism about transition bonds has receded, according to Snam, the Italian gas distribution company that is the product’s leading issuer. While some ‘dark green’ investors still do not want to buy its bonds, many others do. One day, the company may officially be able to call its bonds green.

North Star Housing, a housing association in the northeast of England, has sold £80m of 40 year debt to Pension Insurance Corp, as housing associations prove the saving grace of an otherwise muted year for private placements.

Barclays has invited holders of some of its legacy tier two bonds to exchange their notes for cash, as it looks to smarten up its debt capital structure.

Henrik Stille, senior portfolio manager at Nordea Asset Management, talked to GlobalCapital about the covered bond market and the incredible returns that his strategies have delivered this year, from traditional long-only solutions to innovative leveraged alternatives.

Emerging market bond mandates are continuing into the last month of the year, despite expectations that activity would quieten down after a jam-packed year of issuance. Kuwait’s Burgan Bank and Montenegro are among some of the CEEMEA issuers seeking to take advantage of unfalteringly attractive credit conditions.

Saxony elected to bring a 15 year benchmark to market on Tuesday, launching the deal in an otherwise deserted primary market. The negative yield told against the deal, which was sold without being fully subscribed.

Société Générale took advantage of superlative conditions in the US dollar market at the start of the week, raising $2bn of funding with a tightly priced deal in non-preferred senior format.