France
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
-
-
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.
-
-
KommuneKredit will hit the road next week to talk up a new green bond, while a fellow Nordic issuer is looking to enter the social bond market — although not for some time yet.
-
The return to health of the investment grade corporate bond market has been a path carefully trodden one step at a time. French electrical components manufacturer Schneider printed a successful nine year new issue on Wednesday, following corporate deals with eight and seven year tenors on the previous days of the week, but the lack of other supply surprised some bankers.
-
The Paris IPO of Delachaux Group, the French maker of railway equipment, has been called off after CVC agreed to sell its stake in the company to Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) for an undisclosed price.
-
A French agency hit the short end of the euro market on Wednesday in what is likely the final SSA euro benchmark ahead of the European Central Bank’s meeting on Thursday.