France

Altran Technologies’ founding shareholders and investor Apax Partners raised €297m on Wednesday after pricing an accelerated equity sale within the lower half of expectations.

Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), the Paris transport authority, printed its inaugural green bond on Thursday, selling a €500m no-grow into a thrice oversubscribed book and pulling the price in 5bp from guidance.

Apax Partners and other shareholders are tonight selling a block of about €300m of shares in Paris-traded Altran Technologies.

Two more dual tranche bond deals were priced in euros on Wednesday. BP followed a similar path to previous issues this week, printing eight year and 12 year tranches. However Safran, the French defence company, printed two year and four year floating rate notes.

French agency Société de Financement Local (SFiL) raised $1bn with its first ever dollar bond on Wednesday, while the German State of North Rhein-Westphalia pushed out its curve to 2048.

Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), the Paris transport authority, is coming to market for a 10 year green bond on Thursday.

Orange, the French telecoms company, sold a third of its stake in UK peer BT Group on Monday night through a block trade and used another third to back an exchangeable bond in an attempt to “take a balanced approach when reducing its exposure”, a banker on the deal said.

Coentreprise de Transport d’Electricité made a statement with its inaugural bond issue on Tuesday. The holding company for the French power grid company achieved its aim of raising €2.92bn in three tranches, achieving greater size with the longer bonds.

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.