Europe

France printed a €5bn 2052 benchmark on Tuesday, opting for an aggressive pricing strategy and keeping to a more restrained size than its typical €7bn.

The scale of change in financial markets over the past decade has been crazy. At the beginning of 2010, the eurozone sovereign debt crisis was a gathering storm, with Greece about to become its first and biggest casualty. A decade on, some now consider the Hellenic Republic a safe haven investment as investors try to protect their money from the repercussions of the coronavirus outbreak.

Greece hit the market with its longest bond since the sovereign debt crisis on Tuesday. Its boldness was rewarded by its strongest order book since it returned to capital markets.

Austrian sensor maker AMS said on Tuesday that it intended to sell all its treasury shares, ahead of its looming €1.64bn rights issue to finance its takeover of Osram Licht, the German lighting manufacturer.

UPC, part of Liberty Global’s European telecoms empire, is marketing dollar and euro term loan ‘B’s to pay off a $1.14bn issue of 5.375% senior secured notes. The refinancing comes only a few months after Sunrise cancelled its takeover of UPC’s Swiss business — to the disappointed of Liberty.

Caisse de Refinancement de l’Habitat (CRH) managed to attract demand of more than €6bn for its two part eight and 15 year transactions issue on Tuesday, with the bonds pricing tighter than where BPCE recently issued similar deals and with considerably more demand — despite a 22bp plunge in yields and with consistent demand from the European Central Bank.

National Australia Bank attracted healthy demand for its £1bn five year Sonia-linked covered bond issued on Tuesday, pricing the deal much tighter than where Commonwealth Bank of Australia issued two weeks ago with more demand and at an equivalent cost of euro funding.

The European Commission wants to develop new non-financial reporting standards that will compel EU companies to publish more information about the risks they face from climate change and other sustainability issues.

Société Générale has mandated leads for a green covered bond, the second to be issued under its Positive Impact framework. At the same time Sparkasse Pforzheim Calw is due with a sub-benchmark Pfandbrief.

Jens Lindqvist and Brough Ransom have moved from N+1 Singer to Investec to cover healthcare.

Olaf Diaz-Pintado has been named head of Goldman Sachs’s cross markets group for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while the bank has appointed new regional heads for its financial and strategic investors group.

More than three quarters of European banks have poor standards of internal governance, according to the European Central Bank, which warned on Tuesday that management bodies were simply 'not effective'.