Europe

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.

The European Central Bank’s purchase programme will do little to aid agencies in raising cash in the commercial paper market, making little difference to rising borrowing costs and expanding programmes, according to Jérôme Margerin, head of short-term funding at ACOSS, one of Europe’s largest non-sovereign CP issuers.

Spain enjoyed enormous demand for a 10 year syndicated bond on Tuesday, with an order book which was almost double the previous record for a single tranche euro public sector benchmark. Bankers away from the deal said investors were attracted by the big new issue premium on offer.

Europe's equity capital market bankers are expecting a resurgence of secondary share sales by investors over the coming weeks as financial sponsors look to take advantage of the rebound in global equity markets since the start of the pandemic to raise cash to redeploy elsewhere.

Some bank treasury teams are weighing up whether to access the primary market ahead of first quarter results, with bankers suggesting they could take advantage of growing demand amid falling supply.

The Republic of Hungary has mandated a consortium of banks to lead a dual tranche bond issue in euros. The government's debt management body has increased its foreign currency issuance limits as a result of the spread of Covid-19.

Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has increased its funding programme for the year by €10bn following measures announced by the government to counter the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.