Europe

Countryside Properties, the UK house builder and urban regeneration company, completed a equity raise on Wednesday evening to repay debt in order to help it grow its business.

The growth of green convertible bonds is promising and there are hopes for more issuance. However, the market has some way to go before it becomes mainstream, according to sources.

Invesco has changed the line-up of its fund managers across a number of fixed interest funds, with Paul Read, co-head of fixed interest, stepping down from several funds.

Franck Lacour is taking over HSBC’s equities business, with Hossein Zaimi leaving the bank. In Hong Kong, Selene Chong will take on new responsibilities in the equities business.

Royal Vopak, the Dutch oil and gas storage company, has sold $500m-equivalent in US private placements.

Laetitia Hamon has joined the Luxembourg Stock Exchange to lead its sustainable finance offering, including its exchange for securities branded as sustainable.

Bank of America has appointed Martina Slowey as head of equities for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Negative yielding covered bonds, which are trading close to their tightest-ever spread levels, could become less attractive to bank investors relative to European Central Bank (ECB) deposits, which may soon become more generously tiered, and government bonds, where an increase in supply is likely, said bankers on Wednesday.

Ivan Tavrin, the former CEO of Russian telecoms company Megafon, is seeking to raise $250m for a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) which is likely to target a merger with a Russian company.

Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) saw a window to market an additional tier one (AT1) bond on Wednesday, ahead of its second quarter earnings disclosure. It is looking to use the debt to boost its regulatory capital ratios.

UBS Group opened books on new additional tier one (AT1) on Wednesday, as it looked to hoover up demand from yield-starved investors in the Reg S dollar market.

Credit analysts hope that European banks will be able to report much stronger capital levels in the second quarter, amid early signs that risk-weighted asset (RWA) volumes could be lower than expected.