Europe

Hotel Chocolat, the UK chocolatier and retailer, sold 9.77m new shares after revealing that its revenues in March have been damaged by the Covid-19 coronavirus; the company hopes the capital will give it flexibility in the weeks and months ahead. More UK SMEs will no doubt follow it to market over the next few weeks.

Corporate funding markets have been thrown into turmoil faster than anyone can remember by the aggressive onslaught of the coronavirus and government measures to put society in emergency shutdown. Borrowing costs have soared for all firms, but markets are not closed. As Jon Hay, David Rothnie and Silas Brown report, the coming weeks will sort those that can still raise cash from those that need rescuing.

Central banks attacked the coronavirus threat this week, promising swathes of new money on an unprecedented scale to help fund governments’ colossal new fiscal commitments. Bond markets reacted with relief to the swathe of multi-billion programmes aimed at fending off global financial meltdown.

The European Central Bank threw the kitchen sink at the bond market this week with its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP). Borrowers are assessing their funding programmes, which will rise in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. But they are in no hurry to sell new issues, with investor appetite minimal in the secondary market.

“There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.” So said Vladimir Lenin, although the founder of Soviet Russia probably didn’t write this with the capital markets in mind.

Wild swings in the euro/dollar basis swap, and an unreliable interest rate swap complicated bond execution in the SSA market this week. While some liquidity has returned in rates, cross currency swaps are still behaving very strangely.

International banks are at risk of depleting their capital reserves as they try to keep credit flowing to companies through the coronavirus crisis. Governments and regulators have already responded, but the sector is screaming out for more work to be done to ease the burden of complying with stringent accounting and supervisory rules, reports Tyler Davies.

The biggest investment banks are enjoying strong trading revenues from the market moves related to the coronavirus pandemic, alleviating a freeze in M&A and underwriting activity. The banks appear well-placed to deal with corporate drawdowns, although there is some debate around wider liquidity profiles.

Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal and Toronto Dominion Bank all issued euro covered bonds in good size this week, finding big savings over senior unsecured issuance. One leading investor said bringing these deals in a fragile market was opportunistic and reflected The Bank of Canada's more restrictive provision of emergency liquidity than in Europe.

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Firms across Europe are clamouring for crisis funding but while debt advisory bankers have joined the frontline in finding solutions some admit they may struggle to cope with the sheer scale of the challenge, writes David Rothnie.

After an extraordinary Monetary Policy Committee meeting on Thursday, the Bank of England voted to drop the base rate by an additional 15bp to bring it to a new low of 0.1%. Alongside this cut, the central bank has announced it will up its holdings of government and corporate debt by £200bn. Initial signs in the bond makrets were positive.