Europe

RTW investments, the US-based life sciences and pharmaceutical investment company, is seeking to list a new vehicle fund on the specialist fund segment of the London Stock Exchange.

Bureau Veritas, the unrated certification agency headquartered in Paris, has entered the US private placement, according to market participants.

Caisse Francaise de Financement Local (Caffil) has mandated leads for a roadshow to present its new green covered bond framework that, unlike its peers, is secured on public sector assets.

UBI Banca launched a €500m non-preferred senior bond this week, supported by orders of €1.4bn at peak, but it had to pay a new issue premium, according to a FIG banker.

La Banque Postale (LBP) took advantage of a rare rise in yields to issue a positive yielding covered bond on Monday. Its tiny return was enough to ensure success and stood in contrast to the negative-yielding deals issued last week that could have been hit by European Central Bank’s deposit tiering, said bankers.

Crédit Agricole launched a non-preferred senior bond on Monday in green format, attracting investors who put in over €2.3bn of orders at guidance.

SoftwareOne Holding, the KKR-backed IT services company, is making good progress on its IPO on the SIX Swiss Exchange, despite market sentiment being hit by the poor aftermarket performance of TeamViewer, the German software company that listed in Frankfurt last month.

The six biggest US investment banks alongside three European firms have created DirectBooks to assist primary market bond sales. It aims to start in the US investment grade corporate market before branching out to other fixed income products.

Dutch chemicals company OCI is issuing almost $1.4bn of senior secured notes to repay outstanding debt, with a long term aim of simplifying its capital structure and deleveraging.

Debut Italian covered bond issuer Banca Popolare dell’Alto Adige, which is based in South Tyrol and is more commonly known as Volksbank, has mandated leads for a roadshow ahead of a planned deal.

Infrastructure investment business 3i Infrastructure (3iN), which is controlled by private equity firm 3i Group, managed to buck Brexit volatility and place 81m new shares into the market, to fund the pay down of a revolving credit facility linked to acquisition financing.

This week's funding scorecard looks at the progress French agencies have made in their funding programmes at the start of the fourth quarter.