France

Agence Française de Développement raised €1.5bn on Wednesday with a 10 year Reg S benchmark. While the deal was fully subscribed, pricing was not tightened from guidance, indicating that the frothy moves of the last three weeks may be slowing.

Caisse Centrale du Crédit Immobilier de France (3CIF) came to market with a five year bond on Monday, paving the way for fellow French agency SNCF to follow up with its green debut.

Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) on Monday became the first covered bond issuer in April to tighten pricing from initial guidance. Other issuers will take confidence from it to consider longer dated funding, offering an alternative to European Central Bank’s repo facilities.

Axa said this week that it would call one of its legacy tier two bonds as it reassured the market on the strength of its balance sheet during the coronavirus crisis. Most other insurance companies are not expected to face similar decisions until much later this year.

Crédit Mutuel Home Loan SFH followed Crédit Agricole SFH and BPCE on Thursday with a third French five year covered bond, which was priced at an identical spread. Even though the three issuers have raised almost €5bn between them, covered bond volumes are down this year and, with spreads at elevated levels, issuers will have more reason than ever to tap the European Central Bank for funding.

Crédit Agricole jump-started the primary covered bond market on Wednesday with a deal that is hoped will re-establish something of a normal rhythm of issuance.

Some of the largest financial institutions in the eurozone have yet to cancel or postpone their dividend distributions for this year, despite explicit guidance from the European Central Bank urging them to restrict payouts during the coronavirus crisis.

For consistency and execution, Société Générale is GlobalCapital’s best bank for equity capital markets in France and Benelux.

Public sector borrowers returned en masse to the primary bond market this week, with many selling new issues with an explicit focus on providing emergency financing in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

The SSA market appears to be well and truly up and running, with four SSA borrowers hitting screens for new bonds in euros on Thursday, pulling in an impressive €11.5bn with deals from three to 30 years

Unédic, the French unemployment agency, will have a substantially bigger funding programme for 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to its chief financial officer, Jun Dumolard.

BPCE took advantage of the improvement in credit sentiment to issue a €1bn five year covered bond on Tuesday. The deal attracted a granular order book and was priced close to where it would have been expected to come in light of recent Canadian deals — 20bp above theoretical fair value.