France

The private placement market is proving its worth at the long end in euros and with dollar floaters, helping issuers make the most of excellent conditions.

Direct Energie, the French gas power stations group, raised €130m of new capital on Tuesday evening in a block trade, to finance its acquisition of renewable energy group Quadran for an initial €303m.

SNCF Réseau launched its first 30 year green bond on Tuesday, following the example set by European Investment Bank at the end of June. KfW was also out in euros with a long 15 year — and more borrowers might be tempted to bring euro deals at the long end, said bankers.

Only one new issue was announced on Monday in the European corporate bond markets. While Telekom Austria brought a tap of a recent deal, the French fleet management and car leasing company, ALD, came to market with its largest transaction to date, offering a longer tenor than any of its previous deals.

Respite from a two week old rout in eurozone government bond yields allowed two public sector borrowers on Monday to venture out with mandates for long dated euro deals. But analysts warned that the sovereign bond sell-off could have more room left to run.

Carmila, the retail property owner and manager owned by Carrefour, has bagged €503m in a capital increase, after acquiring a listing earlier in June by merging with Cardety, a smaller French property company.

Leveraged loan investors have recently started to win victories on deal terms, but on Thursday French engineering firm Socotec brought confirmation that market conditions are still in favour of borrowers. However, another of this week’s deals underlined the fact that investors can sometimes succeed in getting better terms.

Agence Française de Développement’s change to its banking licence will lead to it sell more private placements, according to Bokar Cherif, the head of the agency’s treasury.

Caisse d’Amortissement de la Dette Sociale (Cades), the French social security debt agency, is set to form a much closer working arrangement with Agence France Trésor, the French sovereign debt office, in an effort to reduce operational risk.

Agence Française de Développement’s plans to change its banking license will lead to it selling more private placements, according to Bokar Cherif, the agency's head of treasury.

The long end of euro government bond curves appear to have regained their health once more after a wobble last week when comments from European Central Bank president Mario Draghi were thought to signal that quantitative easing would end sooner than expected.

On Monday night, the first equity block trade of the week in Europe came in the form of a sale of a 2% stake in Derichebourg, the French rubbish collection, recycling and outsourcing group that has a €1.2bn market cap, by the controlling family.