France

Investment grade corporate bond market players only had to wait one day for the first new deals of 2018. Renault and BMW both brought new paper to market on Wednesday, selling a total of €2.75bn of bonds with little premium.

Compagnie de Finacement Foncier (CFF) was unable to attract a swell of demand for its 10 year, possibly due to the tight starting spread. In contrast, yield hungry investors flocked to ABN Amro’s mega-sized 15 year offering.

LCH Group and pan-European exchange Euronext have revealed their completion of a share swap, in which the exchange took a 2.3% stake in LCH Group in return for an 11.1% stake in France-based clearing house LCH SA.

Agence France Trésor is about to finish deciding the scope of eligible green projects that could be funded by its green OAT issuance in 2018, and will announce this to the market by mid-January.

The green OAT issuance programme of France involves a cost to the issuer, but this has so far been compensated for by the slightly cheaper funding France can get by issuing green bonds.

Marguerite Bérard-Andrieu is leaving BPCE, having been chief executive for a year and a half. The bank's board has appointed François Riahi to replace her, from the new year.

Europe's largest property company Unibail-Rodamco announced an agreed offer of $15.7bn for the equity of Westfield Corp, the Australian shopping centre operator, on Tuesday. The deal, which valued the enterprise at $24.7bn, was the second retail property consolidation in a week as the sector comes under the M&A spotlight, writes Nigel Owen.

France is looking to syndicate an inflation linked benchmark in 2018, after announcing its funding plans for the year on Thursday.

Caisse d'Amortissement de la Dette Sociale’s funding need for 2018 will be less than half that of 2017, the French agency said on Tuesday. It also provided an update on its merger with Agence France Trésor, the French sovereign debt agency.

Unibail-Rodamco has taken out a €6.1bn bridge facility from its advisers Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, to finance its acquisition of Westfield Corp, the Australian shopping centre operator, for an enterprise value of $24.7bn.

France’s pioneering work on sovereign green bonds took another step forward on Monday, as it named the members of its green OAT evaluation council on the same day that the group held its first meeting.

Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten on Tuesday printed “another great example” of what bankers said were the “tangible price benefits” of selling SRI bonds. The trade came in the same week that France tapped its famous green OAT — or GrOAT — via auction.