Europe

Wordline, the French payments company, has returned to the equity-linked market to sell a new five-year €600m convertible bond at a negative yield.

EMEA’s equity capital markets were buzzing on Friday morning after Goldman Sachs placed a 13.2m block of shares in Cellnex, the Spanish telecoms tower company, which allowed the company’s largest shareholder to monetise rights that it intends not to exercise in the issuer's forthcoming €4bn rights issue.

In this round-up, the already fraught relationship between the US and China faces fresh tests, as both countries continue announcing retaliatory measures against each other.

Surging redemptions and aggressive buying by the ECB — which is also offering issuers a cheaper funding alternative — mean a reduced supply outlook for the covered bond market and, therefore, ever tighter spreads. But higher yielding, safer alternative investments are on the horizon, meaning the asset class may soon lose its allure.

Coventry Building Society (CBS) is racing to price Economic Master Issuer 2020–1, with the help of arrangers HSBC and Lloyds, to meet the huge demand for the deal, which is a hybrid between a master trust structure and a standalone RMBS — the first of its kind. The transaction, set to herald the next step in master issuer structures, is an innovation which could open the door to more financial institutions committing to long-term RMBS programmes, writes Tom Brown.

A burst of additional tier one (AT1) supply this week showed that financial institutions will be keen to take advantage of every funding window available this summer, despite having made substantial progress on their annual issuance plans.

EU leaders spent 91 of the 120 hours available at their Special European Council, which concluded on Tuesday, thrashing out the bloc’s new €1.82tr budget — including the €750bn recovery fund — dubbed Next Generation EU. The decision spells dramatic changes not just for the eurozone but for its bond markets, writes Lewis McLellan.

The double whammy of coronavirus and a crisis at the top of the bank makes the most testing of times for the new head of Commerzbank’s corporate clients division to make his mark. But Roland Boekhout has a broad vision for the firm’s corporate and investment bank and ideas for how to implement it, writes David Rothnie.

BioNTech, the German biopharmaceuticals company, is selling 5.5m American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) on the Nasdaq through a share sale and a rights issue. The company, which is working with Pfizer to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, is the latest issuer to hit the market in a wave of biotech ECM issuance — but buyers are being warned against being too eager, reports Sam Kerr.

Guarantor: Federal Republic of Germany

Deutsche Bank has taken advantage of the addition of more collateral to its Pfandbrief mortgage pool following the merger with the former Postbank entity to issue more than €2bn of retained covered bonds.

Investors turned out in force as KfW brought its first benchmark green bond of the year this week. The strong demand allowed the German agency to print its joint biggest ever green bond on the back of its largest ever order book for such a deal along with an attractive pricing advantage over a conventional bond.