Europe

BPCE raised senior bond funding in sterling on Thursday, making use of constructive conditions in the currency. The lender launched its deal at a spread that, on an after-swap basis, was roughly in line with where it could have landed in euros.

Intesa Sanpaolo chose to split an additional tier one (AT1) deal into two tranches on Thursday, with one eye on the secondary performance of the bonds and the other on the maturity profile of its debt capital stock.

The IPO of French video games developer and accessories company Nacon was covered almost immediately on Thursday morning when order books were opened.

Equity capital markets bankers have welcomed the return of rights issues as the total volume of underwritten equity raises announced year-to-date ramps up. Now, they are thirsty for more.

Alain Gallois will become Natixis’s global head of investment banking, replacing Mohamed Kallala. The latter is heading over to run global markets, with that role’s incumbent, Luc François, leaving the bank.

A pair of SSA borrowers hit screens on Wednesday for green euro benchmarks. However, one has decided that its marketing process will be entirely conducted over the phone.

The US Treasury slapped sanctions on a Rosneft subsidiary on Tuesday for brokering sales of Venezuelan crude oil that supported president Nicolás Maduro’s government. Some expect this to be the first of similar actions, in the run up to the US presidential election.

ING Groep postponed the sale of an additional tier one after clocking up $11bn of demand in the dollar market on Wednesday. At the same time, Arion Bank was looking to launch a $100m deal in the same format — the lowest volume on record in dollars.

Gazprom returned to the Eurobond market for the first time in a year on Tuesday, pulling in $4bn of orders at one stage in the pricing process, despite the US sanctioning a Rosneft subsidiary.

Crédit Agricole SFH took advantage of a quiet market, mandating lead managers on Wednesday for a mortgage backed covered bond with a rare 12 year tenor. The prospective deal emerged after S&P published an upbeat report on the French covered bond market.

Equity capital markets investors should prepare for a pipeline of new Russian stock market listings for as early as this year, according to several bankers working on the deals. A strong year for block sales in 2019 will be followed by some sizeable IPO activity on the Moscow exchange.

German airline Lufthansa is looking for at least €150m of Schuldschein debt with a 400 day maturity. The marketing period for the deal is just one week.