France

France’s state postal service La Poste priced a €250m tap with relative ease on Monday, as corporate investors put in orders for a name considered an agency by some. La Poste is rated A/A+.

Pernod Ricard, the French distiller, priced an opportunistic €500m bond on Monday, paying an 18bp new issue premium in a market that some participants feel is getting heavier.

The euro pipeline for SSAs is fit to burst amid strong conditions, with a trio of issuers hitting screens on Monday and at least one borrower set to come with a deal later in the week.

A well known public sector DCM banker is to add another string to his bow, taking on capital financing responsibilities in France, GlobalCapital understands.

The Euromoney Smaller European Companies Index Series currently comprises 1350 companies across 16 European countries.

A trio of covered bond issuers offered seven year deals on Monday with Banca Popolare di Milano, Société Générale and Lloyds selling deals from a variety of jurisdictions. While each deal printed with appropriate premiums, the high level of supply has meant that investors were more discerning, resulting in slower bookbuilds.

Société Générale offered its first covered bond since February into a busy market on Monday. As a core bank and from a core eurozone country, the trade offers the highest quality of the three seven year deals in the market on Monday and the tightest spread. The issuer was, however, forced to offer a 7bp concession in order to price over French government bonds.

Barclays began marketing a multi-tranche Samurai trade on Monday, as some FIG bankers claimed European banks were still baulking at the new issue premiums being offered by US visitors to the euro market.

Read on to see how selected French agencies are progressing through their 2015 funding programmes.

Commerzbank, Caisse Francaise de Financement Local (Caffil) and Bayerische Landesbank (BayernLB) invigorated the long end of the covered bond market this week with 10 year deals, a duration which had not been seen for over four months.

UniCredit Bank Austria (Baca) returned to the covered bond market on Tuesday to issue the first Austrian Pfandbrief since the country’s Financial Markets Authority (FMA) announced a debt moratorium on bonds issued by Heta Asset Resolution AG (HAR).

Banque Fédérative du Crédit Mutuel opened the euro tier two market for a long list of names, as bankers sit on a pipeline that some say contains more than 20 transactions.