Europe

English football’s highest level is at a clinch point as teams juggle a plunge in revenue, due to the suspension of the Premier League season, and the hefty overheads of player wages they must continue to pay. With clubs in need of cash, viable options are proving few and far between. Silas Brown, Sam Kerr and Mariam Meskin investigate.

High quality Yankee issuers showed their spirit of adventure by printing front-end trades this week, returning to a part of the curve that has been starved of supply since the start of the coronavirus crisis.

Rating: —/BBB/BBB

German chemicals and consumer goods firm Henkel cleaned up in Swissies after a 24 year absence this week, while local company SGS ventured out further along the maturity curve.

BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole enjoyed the best of conditions as they reopened the market for non-preferred senior bonds from eurozone banks this week, but Société Générale ran into market turbulence when it emerged a day later. Bankers said that showed that demand for the instrument remains limited.

Italian government bonds sold off sharply this week as worries grew over the sovereign’s debt sustainability after last week’s Eurogroup meeting left any form of debt mutualisation a highly unlikely prospect in the near term. The result is that Italy will have to rely more on support from the European Central Bank as it prepares to bolt on a much bigger borrowing programme in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Bank of Italy officials said this week that the country’s most fragile financial institutions might struggle to cope with the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, raising the prospect of consolidation within the banking sector.

Informa, the UK publishing and events company, has taken the decision to suspend its dividend and raise £1bn of fresh equity after the Covid-19 pandemic caused hundreds of its conferences to be postponed.

Agence France Trésor, the French sovereign debt office, has published a second draft budget bill for 2020, which will see it issue much more debt than previously announced.

Santander and Deutsche Bank in Spain have structured the first Cédulas deals to be issued under the Cédulas de Internacionalización legal framework designed to finance export finance loans. The deals are likely to be retained for central bank repo purposes and emerge amid a huge expansion in retained covered bond volumes after the European Central Bank recently cut repo valuation haircuts.

DCM officials have expressed surprise at the speed with which the market has adapted to working from home during the coronavirus pandemic, with issuers able to complete deals quickly and with little extra fuss.

Banks have been building their financial sponsor coverage teams on a record period of deal making. Now they have a different fight on their hands, but bankers are playing down the threat of a 2008-style meltdown, writes David Rothnie.