Europe
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Public sector borrowers piled into dollars across the curve this week, with every issuer finding plenty of demand. But it was trades from Finland and Cades which stood out with aggressive price tightening and chunky order books as they made their long-awaited returns to the currency. -
The Canton of Geneva took its 2020 funding up to almost Sfr1.2bn ($1.2bn) this week with a triple tranche deal — the most it has funded in a single year since 2013, according to Dealogic. Elsewhere, an attractive basis for dollar funders led a pair of rare issuers to return to the market.
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French covered bond issuer Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) ventured into unexplored territory at the end of last week to print the longest ever covered bond.
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Mortgage payments deferred under national payment holiday schemes, designed to help homeowners through lockdowns, are adding risk to the covered bond market. Concerns were brought into sharp relief this week when Banco BPM amended programme documentation to include such loans, writes Bill Thornhill.
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$14.6bn of secondary block paper priced in Europe and the US this week, according to Cortex data, as sellers offloaded large stakes in listed companies. They were taking advantage of a rally since the bottom of the pandemic sell-off in March. However, falling earnings estimates mean some fear that sellers may be divesting stock because they believe the market is overvalued.
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ArcelorMittal’s $2bn recapitalisation with equity and mandatorily convertible bonds has traded badly in the aftermarket, leaving investors nursing heavy losses and raising fears of wider market contagion. Aidan Gregory, Sam Kerr and Owen Sanderson report.
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Unédic and NRW.Bank are planning to issue their first ever social bonds. The proceeds of Unédic's bond will go towards providing support for the French state unemployment package.
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Bank of Ireland this week issued the first additional tier one (AT1) capital instrument since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, minimising the execution risk by borrowing from the ECM playbook and wall-crossing the deal ahead of launch.
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The covered bond market continued to perform well on Wednesday with the ultra-long end of the Dutch curve posting the strongest performance, albeit on no trading flow. French and Canadian deals are also performing well, even as bids were hit in good size. But one major investor said he was aghast at the poor overall liquidity and blamed central bank policy.
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The European Parliament was on Thursday set to agree a declaration to the European Commission calling for a “massive recovery package”.
