Europe

This week’s £1.88bn ($2.43bn) IPO of The Hut Group (THG) in London is leading to hopes that European technology firms will follow in listing on their home markets rather than in the US.

Caffil took advantage of extraordinarily strong market conditions on Monday to issue a sizeable eight year covered bond slightly inside fair value and was followed on Thursday by Compagnie de Financement Foncier with the second largest covered bond of the week, and though it was also priced tightly, demand was far less compelling.

RBC Capital Markets’ expansion in European investment banking came in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. A decade on, the coronavirus pandemic has presented it with a very different set of challenges.

Coventry Building Society struggled to build much momentum behind the sale of a new senior bond this week, as the sterling market proved especially vulnerable to new fears around Brexit.

NN Bank extended along its soft bullet covered bond curve this week, following its strategy to fund in the ultra-long end. A tightly priced five year from Fédération des Caisses Desjardins du Québec (CCDJ) followed the deal later in the week.

Market participants are still speculating about exactly how the EU's Taxonomy of Sustainable Economic Activities will shape sustainable finance.

Bookrunners on the IPO of Hensoldt, the German sensor maker that supplies the defence industry, has enjoyed a strong start to its bookbuilding process after setting a range for its IPO on Wednesday.

Eika Boligkreditt and Sparebanken Vest Boligkreditt issued covered bonds flat or inside their curves this week. But a deal for Sparebank 1 Boligkredit stood out for its green credentials that ensured it received more demand from more investors and achieved a much larger deal size.

Altice France leapt straight into the market after Friday’s surprise announcement that owner and founder Patrick Drahi would be taking the company private. Research from Federated Hermes shows that the credit spread premium for a private company has dropped to virtually zero for the first time in 20 years.

French visual effects and digital services company Technicolor has finished a €330m recapitalisation as part of its efforts to exit from bankruptcy proceedings.

Dutch DIY group Maxeda launched a refinancing this week which pushed up its rating, after it took out its 2022s with new 2026 bonds, taking any liquidity constraints for the triple-C rated chain firmly off the table. Despite the pandemic, the retailer has been successfully deleveraging, helped by a boom in home improvements during lockdown.

Fédération des caisses Desjardins du Québec (CCDJ), Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) and Sparebanken Vest Boligkreditt (Svegno) were set to issue covered bonds with zero new issue premiums on Thursday. But after a surprisingly busy week, the market is now "running out of steam" with order books were much slower to build and subscription ratios far lower than transactions issued earlier this week.