Europe

Italian banks have made the most of improving market conditions in 2019, with the average cost of five year senior debt having fallen by 40bp in the last six months, according to Bank of Italy data.

Francesco Bertocchini has joined Nomura from UBI Banca as a managing director for Italy.

The European Parliament is challenging EU member states over the governance of its planned Taxonomy of Sustainable Economic Activities. At stake is who gets to decide what goes into it. The issue is one of several still to be thrashed out before the Taxonomy can become law.

One of Europe’s leading bond syndicate bankers is leaving MUFG.

Russian conglomerate Sistema and the Russia-China Investment Fund have sold a Rb15.9bn ($249.7m) chunk of stock in Detsky Mir, the Russian toy store, after a fully marketed offering designed to boost the freefloat of the company and diversify the shareholder base.

A number of block trades were priced this week as the EMEA equity capital markets ground towards the end of the year. While some banks had expected the week to be busier, the last five days have proven the market is still well and truly open for new business.

In this round-up, the China Europe International Exchange (Ceinex) is working on establishing a Stock Connect scheme between China and Germany, the National People’s Congress criticises the Hong Kong High Court’s decision around the anti-mask law and the People’s Bank of China lowers its benchmark interest rates.

Green finance specialists gave a cautious welcome this week to an idea put forward by Axa that the European Union should set up a new organ, modelled on the European Stability Mechanism, to borrow about €500bn for investments to fight climate change. Jon Hay and Burhan Khadbai report.

Pfandbriefzentrale issued its largest ever bond this week, a Sfr1.386bn ($1.398bn) triple-tranche deal that included a Sfr980m 12 year tranche that was itself the largest single issue in the Swiss franc bond market this year.

Armenian bank Ardshinbank has postponed a RegS/144A five year dollar loan participation note after a week on the road.

When the European Commission looks at tweaking MiFID II, those worried about market access for small and mid-sized companies would welcome a loosening of rules on research for those firms, at a time of challenges in investment banking and renewed focus on capital markets union.

While the banking sector has pushed for capital requirements to be tweaked to favour green lending, European Central Bank vice president Luis de Guindos said on Thursday that equity funding might prove more appropriate than this for funding new climate technologies. On the same day, the head of supervision at the ECB said capital relief for green assets must be based on evidence.