Europe

Sparebanken Vest Boligkreditt did not need to offer any premium to investors to complete its debut sale of green covered bonds on Wednesday. The deal adds to a recent flurry of socially responsible investments, which are offering financial issuers very competitive terms.

Investors welcomed a 12.5m block sale in Polymetal, the Russian miner of gold and other precious metals, on Tuesday night and poured into the trade following a risk auction.

CaixaBank attracted plenty of demand for its first Covid-19 bond on Wednesday, printing a €1bn deal at a spread that was through the fair value implied by its outstanding securities.

Royal Vopak, the Dutch oil and gas storage company, is marketing senior and subordinated private placements, according to market sources.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Hikma, a Jordanian company listed in London, hit screens this week, raking in cash and proving appetite for credits along the rating spectrum.

In the latest sign that the UK’s capital markets will diverge from the EU’s next year, the head of the European Commission’s task force for relations with the UK, Michel Barnier, called the UK’s demands regarding financial services as “unacceptable”.

Deutsche Börse has announced a handful of job changes, triggered by Hauke Stars leaving the company.

The UK is in many ways a green leader. Starting to issue green Gilts would be peripheral to that, and not necessary to environmental progress. But for a country that desperately needs to buff up its image, it is low-hanging fruit.

Banks are still heavily overbidding at sovereign auctions, in spite of a glut of supply, as they scramble to secure lucrative syndication mandates.

NRW.Bank signalled to the market that there is demand at 15 years with its inaugural social bond on Tuesday. Following the deal two other European issuers, Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten and Portugal, mandated for deals of their own in the tenor.

Sir Ronald Cohen, one of the UK’s foremost private equity entrepreneurs, believes the Covid-19 crisis is an opportunity to transform western capitalism into a socially responsible enterprise that values a company’s impact on society as much as its profits. Cohen talks to GlobalCapital about the tremendous challenges facing the global economy, and how it can be transformed for the better.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development raised some eyebrows with an aggressive spread for its three year dollar benchmark, but the issuer was able to pull in enough demand to print $500m more than anticipated.