France

Arabtec Holding, the United Arab Emirates’ largest listed construction firm, said on Tuesday its rights issue was fully subscribed, raising Dh1.5bn ($408m) for a recapitalisation.

The multi-tranche theme of the week continued on Tuesday. British Telecommunications and Coentreprise de Transport d’Electricité both launched triple tranche bond deals, with the volume skewed towards the longer tranches.

Plastic Omnium, the unrated French car parts maker, on Monday became the first company that had held a European bond roadshow last week to launch a deal.

As temperatures across Europe hit new highs for the year, primary issuance is also hotting up in its corporate bond market. Borrowers led the charge on Monday with three well received deals totalling five tranches.

Crédit Agricole SFH seized an opportunity to issue its fifth covered bond benchmark of the year on Monday and, by pricing flat to its curve, it showed there was little reason to wait for better execution conditions this year.

BNP Paribas will look to place a new non-preferred senior bond among regional investors in Germany this week, as it diversifies its investor base for total loss-absorbing capacity (TLAC) eligible debt.

European corporate bond markets have quickly shrugged off the uncertainty surrounding the UK election result and central bank meetings, and look set for a busy end to June.

The revival of equity-linked issuance in Europe continued this week with three deals, all of the kind investors are looking for: from smaller companies with higher credit spreads and interesting equity stories.

ALD, the car leasing division of Société Générale, priced its €1.15bn Paris IPO near the bottom of its initial range on Thursday.

It is often suggested that issuers have to pay up for issuing sub-benchmark sized deals. However, this week two corporate issuers printed successful €300m transactions with little discernible premium compared to benchmark transactions.

Foncière des Régions printed the only new corporate bond issue on Tuesday. The €500m 10 year deal got a similar reception to TenneT’s dual tranche deal the day before. The level of oversubscription was lower than other deals in recent weeks, but the order book was good quality.

BNP Paribas and Société Générale sold a chunk of their holding in Euronext, the European stock exchange operator, through an accelerated bookbuild on Tuesday night.