France
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CNP Assurances was more than three times subscribed on Wednesday as it issued the first restricted tier one bond in euros at a benchmark size. -
Equity-linked investors got a second opportunity this week to buy new European paper when Soitec, the French maker of semiconductor materials, hit the market on Thursday with a €150m five year convertible bond.
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French toll road operator Autouroutes du Sud de la France kept up the positive tone in the IG corporate bond market with a 10 year deal on Thursday, which it was able to increase in size and price with a single digit new issue premium.
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Erste Group and Caffil found good demand for their covered bonds that were respectively issued in the six and 20 year tenors on Tuesday. But neither deal was straightforward, according to leads, who noted that overnight market volatility had weighed on sentiment.
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Safran, the French aerospace and defence company, has returned to the equity-linked market with a €700m convertible bond due in June 2023.
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Société Générale returned to the covered bond market for the second time this year and found strong demand for its tightly priced long seven year. The excellent reception will help boost confidence for Erste Group and Caffil, which have both mandated for follow-on covered bonds.
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This week's funding scorecard looks at the progress French agencies have made in their funding programmes as the first half of the year draws to a close.
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It is a mark of how far the market has come from a barren week at the end of May that not just one, but three deals, totalling €2.75bn, were priced on Friday. The European Central Bank meeting and the expectation of a deal from German pharmaceuticals company Bayer played their part in the issuers’ decisions on timing and the order books justified those choices.
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The week began with that rarest of things in recent times, a welcoming political backdrop. It was marred, however, by monetary policy meetings from the two most important central banks in the world. While the US Federal Reserve’s second rate hike of the year was a foregone conclusion, it caused the dollar curve to flatten still further, making the euro market even more fertile funding territory than it has been for SSAs. But even so, euros had its own struggles this week, facing what one head of SSA syndicate called “one of the most important and unpredictable European Central Bank meetings for a long time”. Lewis McLellan reports.
