France

Altice France leapt straight into the market after Friday’s surprise announcement that owner and founder Patrick Drahi would be taking the company private. Research from Federated Hermes shows that the credit spread premium for a private company has dropped to virtually zero for the first time in 20 years.

French visual effects and digital services company Technicolor has finished a €330m recapitalisation as part of its efforts to exit from bankruptcy proceedings.

Fédération des caisses Desjardins du Québec (CCDJ), Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) and Sparebanken Vest Boligkreditt (Svegno) were set to issue covered bonds with zero new issue premiums on Thursday. But after a surprisingly busy week, the market is now "running out of steam" with order books were much slower to build and subscription ratios far lower than transactions issued earlier this week.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, one of the world's largest owners of shopping malls, launched a €9bn-plus turnaround plan on Thursday, which includes a €3.5bn rights issue. The aim of is to reduce its leverage to help it withstand the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fédération des Caisses Desjardins du Québec (CCDJ) mandated leads on Wednesday for a five year and Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) mandated leads for a 10 year deal, to take advantage of exceptionally strong market conditions with both deals likely to be launched on Thursday.

French agency Cades and the International Development Association returned to the dollar market for the first time since the summer break on Tuesday to bring a pair of five year socially responsible deals.

Société Générale has added to the recent trend for green deals in the FIG market by launching a €1bn 'positive impact' bond, backed by €5bn of demand.

Altice France is marketing a €900m equivalent eight year bond across dollars and euros, coming hot on the heels of Friday’s announcement that Patrick Drahi, the billionaire owner of the telecoms group, was trying to take Altice Europe private.

French agency Cades will debut its social bond framework in dollars on Tuesday, less than a week after it raised the largest ever bond in the format with its inaugural issue in euros. It will share the market with the International Development Association (IDA), which is preparing to kick off its 2020/21 funding year with a sustainable development benchmark of its own.

Caffil returned to the covered bond market on Monday to issue its fourth trade this year. Despite being its biggest deal in well over two years, it was well subscribed and was priced slightly inside fair value, implying that stretched valuations still have scope to tighten. At the same time UniCredit Austria mandated leads for a 15 year deal.

Apollo Global Management has completed the first selldown of shares in Verallia, the French glass bottle maker, since its €1bn flotation in Paris in October last year.

Crédit Agricole printed its long-awaited Rmb1bn ($146m) Panda bond this week, after delaying its offering by nearly three months due to volatility in China’s onshore debt market.