Europe

The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia made its first visit to the offshore renminbi market earlier this week, continuing this year’s SSA dim sum shopping spree.

Pension Insurance Corp was almost 12 times subscribed for a new tier two capital bond on Thursday, after following some of its UK peers into the sterling market amid a busy pipeline for new pension risk transfer deals.

Recently issued Canadian covered bonds have posted among the strongest performances in the covered bond market and still look cheap relative to Nordic deals, said traders on Wednesday. Based on Markit’s iBoxx covered bond indices, a range of other markets, such as Australia and the UK, also look very cheap, but offers are much harder to find.

The funding needs of Spain’s regions are expected to rise this year. The coronavirus pandemic is stretching healthcare resources, which are funded at a regional level, and will require financing, according to debt capital markets bankers.

Market participants argued that the European Commission could have gone further this week to ease leverage ratio constraints on banks during the coronavirus crisis.

Norwegian video conferencing firm Pexip has shown that there may yet be life in Europe's IPO market, which had been presumed incapacitated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Investors said they are happy to buy new flotations but probably only a select group of companies will be able to come to market.

The Netherlands has increased its borrowing programme for the year as a result of a measures taken by the government following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Société Générale’s equities division posted a 99% year-on-year drop in revenues for the first quarter on Thursday, contributing to an overall loss in both the wholesale division and for the bank overall.

The Instituto de Crédito Oficial expects to come to market for a social bond aimed at mitigating the impact of Covid-19 on the Spanish economy in the next few weeks, if a suitable window presents itself.

Italy was able to raise almost €6bn in auctions with ease on Wednesday following Tuesday night’s unexpected downgrade by Fitch, which leaves it just one notch above junk.

A €1bn five year covered bond issued on Tuesday by Caffil, that was designed to provide funding for French hospitals in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, has demonstrated that the market for public sector covered bonds, which has been in decline for more than a decade, could now be reinvigorated. Higher local authority spending could well find its way into the cover pools of French and German covered bond issuers, the head of treasury and financial markets at SFIL, Caffil's parent organisation, said on Wednesday.

Finnish national airline Finnair has launched a rights issue in response to the coronavirus pandemic — the first in an expected wave of large European rescue recapitalisations.