France

Blackstone sold on Monday night a block of shares in French property company Gecina – the second such trade in five months. Just like last time, the deal failed to clear.

French conglomerate InVivo has raised €680m, in the company's first syndicated loan to involve all of the its relationship banks.

BPCE issued a €1bn seven year mortgage-backed covered bond attracting an exceptional level of subscription from a broad range of real money investors. The transaction, along with earlier deals from AIB and CaixaBank, shows that the seven year tenor is now firmly back in vogue, offering the right trade-off between duration and yield.

This week's funding scorecard looks at the funding progress of French agencies

Cades

Established covered bond investors are often sceptical about conditional pass through deals. The structure allows the maturity of their investments to be extended, perhaps by decades. But they could be safer than long dated bullet deals.

Sagess opted to sit out another turbulent day on Tuesday despite having a deal mandate out, but conditions were not sufficiently bad to dent a dual tranche deal from a supranational nor stop a pair of more regular agencies mandating.

The European Financial Stability Facility will hit the short and long end of the curve with its second benchmark of the year, a move that is being viewed as an effort to achieve size and duration.

BNP Paribas and Compagnie de Financement Foncier seized the chance to issue euro benchmark covered bonds on Friday after sentiment improved overnight. But with spread widening likely to resume before long, one major investor felt the long 10 year from CFF would fare better than the tightly priced five year from BNPP, even though the CFF deal was only just subscribed.

Technip, the French oilfield engineering company, raised €375m on Wednesday with a daring equity-neutral convertible bond — the first such deal since Total’s transaction in November.

Compagnie de Financement Foncier had been expected to open books for a 10 year benchmark on Wednesday, but postponed the deal blaming market conditions. Rival bankers said the long tenor was the wrong choice for the weak market.

Crédit Agricole issued the one and only covered bond of the week on Thursday and showed that it is possible to get a strong outcome in a tough market.