France

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.

On Wednesday, the euro corporate bond market reminded any doubters that it was still very much open for business with five tranches totalling €3bn being priced by three well known issuers.

A senior debt capital markets banker at Crédit Agricole CIB has moved to the bank’s sustainable banking team.

Ardian and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice sold their remaining stakes in Spie, the French engineering company, on Monday night via an auctioned block trade that was priced at a tight discount to the close.

Investor support for leveraged loan deals where the issuer is only seeking to cut margins remains so strong that some borrowers, such as French real estate group Foncia, may do it twice this year.

France announced this morning it would tap its green bond, the famous green OAT or GrOAT, on December 7. The deal will come just before President Emmanuel Macron holds a climate summit in Paris.

Green bond specialists are interested to see whether France will issue another green OAT (GrOAT) to coincide with the country's president Emmanuel Macron's One Planet Summit in December.

A trio of equity-linked issues this week was capped off on Thursday by a €100m convertible bond due in April 2023 from Pierre & Vacances, the French operator of tourist villages.

Private equity firm Ardian is ready to tap Europe’s leveraged finance markets to fund the acquisition of a controlling stake in Dérivés Résiniques et Terpéniques (DRT), the French plant chemistry specialist, but there are mixed views on the outlook for further M&A-fuelled leveraged finance activity.