Europe

Bpifrance is preparing to issue a bond which will be used to provide loans to companies in France to help them overcome the economic difficulties of the coronavirus pandemic.

Europe’s banks sniff opportunities amid the crisis as they look to build out their corporate broking businesses, but they will face fights to remove incumbents, writes David Rothnie.

Belgium and Ireland announced increases to their 2020 funding requirements this week, as they look to counter the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Telecom Italia and Vodafone have monetised part of their stakes in Inwit, the Italian wireless telecommunications infrastructure company, reopening the market for secondary share sales in Europe.

GlobalCapital's Silas Brown spoke to Mathieu Chabran, co-founder of European alternative asset manager Tikehau Capital. They discussed how the relatively new private debt market in Europe will navigate its way through the pandemic, who the winners and losers will be in the asset class, and what opportunities may emerge from the dust.

Credit Suisse took a $294m hit from marking leveraged finance underwriting exposure to market in the first quarter, its results on Thursday showed, as March’s volatility and jump in credit spreads took their toll.

Caisse de Refinancement de l’Habitat (CRH) issued the first big seven year covered bond since February on Thursday, attracting extraordinary demand and pricing in line with where recently issued French five year deals were trading. It sent a bullish signal to the market and came after a long series of French financial institution bonds that have highlighted just how practical and market-orientated the country’s banking sector has become.

The Republic of Hungary made a jumbo return to euro markets on Thursday with its first hard currency trade since 2018. Bankers expect more trades from both the sovereign and its neighbours.

Svenska Handelsbanken and Swedbank looked to be as transparent as possible when laying out their assumptions for loan losses this week, as part of an effort to reassure the market about their resilience in the face of the coronavirus crisis.

Madrid is preparing to sell its first green labelled bond as early as next week, expanding on its established reputation as a sustainable bond issuer.

Jana Hecker, most recently at Deutsche Bank, has been appointed global head of equity capital markets at UniCredit, alongside other personnel changes in the Italian bank’s ECM business.

In the first in a new series of crisis-time interviews with senior capital markets participants, GlobalCapital's Toby Fildes talks to Frank Czichowski, treasurer of Germany's KfW.