Finland

Municipality Finance is looking to publish its social bond framework this year ahead of a debut bond in the format, as it looks to extend its offering of socially responsible bonds.

Handelsbanken has appointed Juha Mustonen as its new head of debt capital markets for Finland. He will work with Finnish loan and bond clients.

Austrian agency Asfinag won a big order book on Tuesday, allowing it to price 3bp tighter than guidance, in a 10 year tenor the issuer hasn't accessed since 2009. Municipality Finance and the German federal state of Lower Saxony will add to the euro SSA supply on Wednesday with a 10 year green bond and a seven year benchmark, respectively.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress Nordic agencies have made at the end of June.

BAWAG, SP Mortgage Bank and Tatra banka have all set their sights on the euro covered bond market, mandating for deals across the maturity spectrum.

Euro and dollar benchmarks issued by Nordea, Lloyds, Korea Housing Finance Corporation (KHFC) and SMBC on Tuesday was a fillip for covered bond market participants suffering through volatile credit market conditions that have caused price expectations to fall.

Finnish local government lender Municipality Finance has appointed its first chief economist. The creation of the role responds to new guidance from the European Central Bank for MuniFin to have a better outlook on the market.

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

Insurance companies are finally picking up bond issuance after a first quarter that suffered the lowest issuance volumes since 2017. Finnish firm Sampo was the latest issuer this week.

Sampo Group started to meet investors on Thursday, aiming to print a tier two note. ASR Nederland was the last insurer to raise tier two capital, in a deal that was more than 10 times oversubscribed.

Walter Ahlström is joining Swedbank as its new head of corporate finance in Finland, as part of its strategy to grow its equity capital markets business and team. He is joining from Carnegie, where he had worked in Finnish ECM. He had been there for nearly four years.

Kingspan, an Irish insulation company, has made a €700m offer for two units of Belgium’s Recticel, but will sell one of them if the deal goes ahead.