France

The operational merger of Cades and Agence France Trésor will be completed by the end of 2018, with a full integration of staff from both agencies.

Bankers working within France’s equity capital markets are resigned to the fact that 2018 is going to be a very poor vintage for French IPOs, with volumes down significantly versus last year, a string of failed deals and supply unlikely to pick up in the second half.

The need to offer healthy new issue premiums is not holding back additional tier one bond issuers this summer. Barclays reopened the market for the product in dollars on Tuesday, to be quickly followed by BNP Paribas.

Interdealer broker TP ICAP revealed on Tuesday that it had chosen Paris as its post-Brexit hub in the European Union, as new CEO Nicolas Breteau called for the flexibility to pay company brokers the "market rate".

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

The financing for the €1bn acquisition of roofing business Imerys Toiture to Lone Star Funds was revised this week to include a subordinated debt tranche, as levfin investors still active in August pocket riskier but higher yielding paper.

Société du Grand Paris, a French agency that plans to sell its debut bond issue later this year, has launched the first ever Green Euro Medium Term Note programme — a move that bankers and experts said could bring a range of benefits to the issuer and the wider SRI market.

France may be top of the world in football but the country’s equity capital market is starting to look a bit second division.

A public sector borrower that plans to debut in the bond markets this year has taken the novel step of making its Euro Medium Term Note programme green.

The IPO of Navya, the French maker of driverless cars and other vehicles, was priced at €7 on Monday, below the initial €9 to €12 range, after the company extended the original bookbuilding period last week.

Natixis will soon embark on an experiment that may be the first of its kind — introducing a green weighting factor to its internal economic capital model, to tilt incentives for its bankers in favour of green loans and away from ‘brown’ ones.

Despite a tricky execution window, Shandong Ruyi, the Chinese textiles conglomerate, has completed the first sale of stock in French fashion house SMCP since its IPO on Euronext Paris last year, alongside the sale of a €50m exchangeable bond.