France

Public sector borrowers found buckets of dollar demand on Tuesday, as a French agency sold its largest ever benchmark in the currency and a supranational printed a trade at the upper end of its historical size range. Another supra is lined up to test whether that demand will hold on Wednesday.

Bankers and investors said that a new deal from Paprec Group, the French waste recycler, showed that the supply of refinancing deals still had legs and could boost overall issuance volumes in the high yield market. Paprec's deal was also green, but did anyone care?

After a reasonable wait, investors are starting to see the more frequent investment grade corporate bond issuers return to the market. On Tuesday, French materials company Saint-Gobain and French telecoms operator Orange sold benchmark deals and UK media company WPP sold a dual-tranche issue.

A pair of public sector borrowers are bringing short end dollar benchmarks as ever widening swap spreads support trades at that part of the curve.

Three French banks were among six financial institutions selling unsecured bonds in the euro market on Monday morning, with BNP Paribas, BPCE and HSBC France raising €3.5bn between them.

French car manufacturer Peugeot has been on a ratings rollercoaster in the last 10 years. On Friday, now back to the highest sub-investment grade ratings, the company sold its third seven year deal in three years.

Gas supplier Air Liquide raised Rmb2.2bn ($347m) from its first Panda bond on March 6, becoming the first European issuer sell a bond with a maturity of longer than three years in the asset class.

French property company Gecina started its funding programme for 2018 with a €500m 12 year offering on Wednesday after selling €2.5bn of bonds in 2017.

Eurazeo, the French private equity group, sold its remaining stake in Accor, the restructured hotel company, through a €552m equity block trade on Tuesday night that cleared at one of the year's tightest discounts.

Insurance firm Axa has made a €12.4bn-equivalent cash bid for XL Group, and the French company says it already has €9bn of back-up bridge financing in place.

RCI Banque was one of the first issuers to sell a corporate bond in 2018. It has returned two months later with a dual-tranche offering which took advantage of demand for floating rate notes as well as fixed rate paper.

The total issuance of investment grade corporate bonds in February was an underwhelming €14.8bn but the property sector has outshone all others in 2018 and this week was no different as investors had further diversification to consider.