Europe

Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) on Monday announced a reduced borrowing programme for 2020.

European equity capital markets bankers are seeing a pick-up in appetite from US-domiciled funds looking across the Atlantic for outperformance.

After the flotations of Saudi Aramco and Française des Jeux (FDJ), equity capital markets bankers expect that privatisations will continue to be a crucial source of business in 2020, although the poor performance of the banking sector in Europe may continue to hold back some potential transactions.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave some reassurance to Ukraine on Saturday, when one of its senior staff told president Volodymyr Zelensky that it has a support programme in place.

Utmost International, the life assurance group which mandated leads to run investor meetings for a senior bond in mid-November, may have missed the issuance window this year as the primary market slows to a standstill around the UK's general election.

Phoenix Group Holdings, the UK life insurer, has stuck a deal to acquire ReAssure, the UK closed book life insurance division of Swiss Re, for £3.2bn in cash and shares.

The European Commission will allow a group of public institutions in Germany to inject €2.8bn of capital into the troubled German lender NordLB, after finding that its recapitalisation plans conformed to EU rules on state aid.

Goldman Sachs has brought its second block in Adyen in under a fortnight, replicating the model it adopted in a sale of stock by Index Ventures on November 25, for fellow IPO seller General Atlantic.

Roland Domann has joined Nomura to look after the asset and liability management and insurance solutions structuring team focusing on European pension fund and insurance clients.

Italy is planning to issue its inaugural green bond in the second half of 2020, joining Germany and Sweden, who are also looking to sell their debut bonds in the format next year.

Denmark’s government debt management office has formally proposed issuing green bonds in which the green element can be stripped off and traded separately — something that would be a world first, and would ask difficult questions of the green bond market. The DMO said investors had welcomed the idea.

A major push towards fiscal easing in Europe, which could be a key driver of capital markets in 2020, looks more likely after the junior partner in Germany's governing coalition elected leaders who are calling for more public investment. Government debt in some other EU countries is already at record levels while demographic changes could push it higher.