French Sovereign

A senior funding officer at a European SSA has crossed the aisle to take up a syndicate position at an investment bank.

Guarantor: Kingdom of Belgium (51.41%), Republic of France (45.59%) and Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (3.00%)

The euro market is providing borrowers with superb execution — KfW gathered its largest ever book for a 10 year on Tuesday — but investors are requiring healthy new issue concessions in order to commit.

KfW and Dexia Crédit Local are first out the blocks in what looks set to be a busy euro market for public sector borrowers this week.

Agence France Trésor is about to finish deciding the scope of eligible green projects that could be funded by its green OAT issuance in 2018, and will announce this to the market by mid-January.

The green OAT issuance programme of France involves a cost to the issuer, but this has so far been compensated for by the slightly cheaper funding France can get by issuing green bonds.

France is looking to syndicate an inflation linked benchmark in 2018, after announcing its funding plans for the year on Thursday.

Caisse d'Amortissement de la Dette Sociale’s funding need for 2018 will be less than half that of 2017, the French agency said on Tuesday. It also provided an update on its merger with Agence France Trésor, the French sovereign debt agency.

France’s pioneering work on sovereign green bonds took another step forward on Monday, as it named the members of its green OAT evaluation council on the same day that the group held its first meeting.

Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten on Tuesday printed “another great example” of what bankers said were the “tangible price benefits” of selling SRI bonds. The trade came in the same week that France tapped its famous green OAT — or GrOAT — via auction.

France announced this morning it would tap its green bond, the famous green OAT or GrOAT, on December 7. The deal will come just before President Emmanuel Macron holds a climate summit in Paris.

Green bond specialists are interested to see whether France will issue another green OAT (GrOAT) to coincide with the country's president Emmanuel Macron's One Planet Summit in December.