France

French glass packaging company Verallia’s registration document has been approved by AMF, France’s market regulator, paving the way for a €4bn IPO on Euronext Paris.

Erste Group and Crédit Agricole competed for covered bond investors’ attention at the long end of the curve on Wednesday with a rise in yields helping boost demand, particularly for the Austrian deal which started with a generous spread. At the same time Deutsche Hypo issued a three year.

France’s benchmark index the CAC 40 has outperformed all of its Western European peers bar Italy this year, leading to hope that this autumn’s French IPOs will be well received by investors, despite the wider macroeconomic and political uncertainties stalking European equity markets.

Barcelona-headquartered paper company Lecta is appealing to bondholders as it tries to strengthen its capital structure. Its bonds are now trading in the 30s while the CVC-sponsored company has fully used its revolving credit facility and is running out of external sources of financing.

Edenred, the French provider of corporate vouchers, has reopened the European equity-linked market after the summer with a €500m sale of convertible bonds due in 2024 that attracted more than 100 investors, according to sources close to the transaction.

Deutsche Hypo, Erste Group and Credit Agricole SCF have mandated leads for covered bonds that are all expected to carry negative yields.

Crédit Agricole CIB has appointed Pierre-Francois Martineau as a managing director in the bank’s new leveraged and telecom finance group (LTFG) in Paris.

Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) unearthed strong demand for the first negative yielding non-German covered bond of the year, and the first with a long tenor.

Issuance is starting to resume after the summer break; however, this week a booming public market drew away investor and issuer attention from MTNs. Despite this, a range of established SSA, FIG and corporate borrowers have slipped in, with deals across core, niche and EM currencies.

Rating: Aa3/AA-/AA-

Finnish nuclear power company Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) got a warm reception from the investors on Wednesday, when it sold €550m of senior unsecured notes after a 20bp tightening from initial price thoughts.

BBVA was marketing an additional tier one bond on Wednesday, making use of the favourable conditions that other issuers have found for similar instruments in the dollar market, while BNP Paribas, Bank of Nova Scotia and Bawag kept euro investors busy.