France

French consulting company Capgemini wasted no time after the Easter break in announcing a new dual-tranche corporate bond issue on Tuesday. The benchmark tranches had 6.5 year and 10 year tenors and were announced alongside a tender offer, but the issuer had to pay a significant premium to its secondary curve.

Rating: Aa2/AA/AA

Volatility from several sources has driven investors into core govvie products, causing curves to rally. Only one issuer was positioned to reap the benefits.

France’s inflation linked bond issue on Wednesday drew the nation's largest book ever for a linker bond, in spite of a curve squeezed tight by volatility.

France announced on Tuesday that it will come to market for an 18 year inflation linked benchmark, making the most of a pre-Easter lull in issuance.

Michelin, the French tyre maker, has got a £1.2bn bridge loan underwritten and arranged by Morgan Stanley to finance its purchase of UK industrial belting manufacturer Fenner.

Europe’s corporate bond new issue market is distinctly subdued as Easter Week begins. Investors, issuers and banks alike feel the market could do with a gap to digest the very heavy issuance earlier this month. This week brought two liability management deals, one with a new issue.

French supermarket group Carrefour returned to the equity-linked market on Thursday to sell a $500m equity-neutral convertible bond due in January 2024.

French engineering consultancy Altran has set the term on its €750m rights issue to finance its acquisition of US global design and engineering company Aricent.

French food company Danone received a strong response on Monday when it sold its inaugural social bond, the first from a corporate issuer since the social bond principles were set out by the International Capital Market Association in June 2017.

The power of equity capital markets to solve complex corporate finance problems elegantly was vividly demonstrated on Tuesday night when JP Morgan and Crédit Agricole led a €2bn sale of Vivendi’s whole 27% stake in Ubisoft, the video game developer, writes Sam Kerr.

Two new SRI corporate bonds were priced on Monday, but with very different results. Iberdrola’s green hybrid bond failed to tighten from initial price thoughts, while Danone’s debut social bond had to pay just 2bp of premium.