Europe

Many felt that Chinese banks, key investors in Schuldscheine, would pull back from the market as the pandemic hit. This has been far from the case.

Dechra Pharmacuticals, the pharmaceutical company focused on pets, raised £134m in an accelerated placing on Wednesday night to strengthen its balance sheet after an M&A wave and to give it headroom for further growth and to protect against the economic headwinds of the coronavirus pandemic.

Nordea Bank took advantage of very attractive conditions in the dollar market this week to price a new senior deal at a spread that was well below the fair value implied by secondary trading levels.

GVS, the Italian manufacturer of masks and filters, has confirmed that it is seeking to list on the Milan stock exchange this month.

Barclays was positively surprised at how quickly capital markets reopened and it wasted little time issuing senior and tier two deals while its treasury team were still working from home. The UK lender is likely to use the Bank of England's Term Funding for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (TFSME) facility, which will lower its secured funding needs. The bank was well capitalised going into the crisis and has buttressed itself against the expected tide of credit impairments with a prudent level of provisioning.

Standard Chartered sold its first capital instrument in euros since 2014 this week, clocking up a considerable 40bp saving versus the dollar market. The deal adds to a recent flurry of tier two supply from European banks.

Estonia returned to the capital markets on Wednesday after 18 years away, introducing itself to a new set of investors as an SSA borrower.

Italy once again asserted its market access on Wednesday, raising a staggering €14bn — its biggest single tranche bond ever. The new issue was timed just ahead of Thursday’s ECB meeting, at which the governing council is expected to expand its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (Pepp).

Four public sector borrowers hit the dollar market on Wednesday, including a rare seven year deal from new issuer International Development Association (IDA).

EU lenders will have to give more detail about their use of loan repayment holidays and public guarantee schemes during the coronavirus pandemic, according to new reporting guidelines published by the European Banking Authority (EBA) this week.

The coronavirus pandemic has made for a busy time for Europe’s equity capital markets with all manner of emergency capital raises and block sales being done alongside even the odd IPO. Market participants expect the pace of issuance to run on in the weeks ahead after May turned out to be one of the best months of the last few years.

Ina Invest Holding, the real estate development division of Swiss construction company Implenia, has announced a Sfr100m at-market rights offer that will complete the spin-off of the company on the SIX Swiss Exchange.