Finland

Covered bonds issued by Intesa Sanpaolo, Axa Bank and Aktia on Tuesday “flew out the door”, according to leads, with the depth and breadth of demand surpassing expectations. The superb conditions may not last, but exuberance is expected to prevail for now.

Siemens, the German engineering group, and Fortum, the Finnish electricity company, hit the corporate bond market on Tuesday with big, multi-tranche euro deals totalling €5.5bn. Both achieved great terms at long tenors in an otherwise quiet market.

OP Corporate Bank came with tight pricing for its first ever green bond on Tuesday. The Finnish lender took just two and a half hours to complete its trade, over three months after it first spoke with investors about a possible transaction.

The Mortgage Society of Finland has mandated leads for a roadshow with a view to issuing a seven year deal. It follows Volksbank Wien which mandated leads last week and precedes a number of issuers expected to announce mandates after emerging from blackout.

Two Nordic telecoms companies sold euro corporate bonds this week after both spending nearly two years on the sidelines. Both employed no-grow strategies, and Swedish company Telia sold the longest maturity corporate bond deal of 2019 so far.

On Thursday, the European corporate bond market saw its second Nordic telecoms new issue of the week. Finnish company Elisa used the same no-grow strategy as its Swedish peer Telia used on Tuesday, but for a smaller deal.

OP Mortgage Bank has issued the first Finnish covered bond of the year and did so at the same spread and in larger size than DZ Hyp managed little more than two weeks ago. With 10 year Bund yields heading towards zero, yield starved investors are chasing the market even tighter.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress Nordic agencies have made in their 2019 funding programmes halfway through the first quarter.

Rating: Aa1/AA+/AA+

The theme in the euro public sector market this week was large book sizes despite issuers paying very little concession, with Finland, the European Investment Bank (EIB), Madrid and the Joint Länder all keeping close to their curves.

All three public sector borrowers in the euro market on Tuesday received record order books, despite the spreads tightening by up to 5bp during pricing — which left little to no concessions for investors.

Finland and Madrid hit screens on Monday to capitalise on the red hot appetite for euro sovereign supply in the 10 year part of the curve.