French Sovereign

A trio of public sector issuers are in the market for senior funding officials after a flurry of moves over the last few weeks. But a fourth borrower, which also lost a senior funding figure, has already appointed a replacement.

The French sovereign could be busy in the long end of the curve in 2015, after the Agence France Trésor revealed plans for a possible 15 to 20 year benchmark on Thursday.

France’s Région Bretagne has revisited the medium term note market following its debut in the format last week. The deal comes at a time of uncertainty for many regions in France as the government redraws the country’s administrative map.

Thursday was a busy day for European investment grade corporate bonds, with €4.9bn issued in euros and sterling. But with a great deal of diversity of issuers, maturities and currencies, the market had more appetite for some than for others.

Three issuers from France, Belgium and Germany raised €2.5bn in the covered bond market this week, and another €1bn transaction was expected from a Finnish issuer on Friday. The deals were all remarkable for the fact that the funding levels set new records for all issuers as the ECB’s allocation continued to grow, squeezing out other investors.

France's Région Bretagne printed its first ever medium term note on Wednesday, in a move to diversify its investor base and achieve more competitive terms on its debt.

Numericable completed its €4.7bn capital increase this week, bringing to an end the financing for the French cable operator’s acquisition of SFR.

Carlyle and Cinven, which launched a block trade on Monday night to sell a 2.2% stake in Altice, the French telecoms investment group, ended up increasing the sale after finding strong, though price-sensitive, demand.

Mercialys, the French property company spun off from supermarkets group Casino, priced a €550m 8.3 year bond on Tuesday, in conjunction with a buyback offer for its €650m 2019 bond, to extend its debt maturity profile.

Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have launched this evening a block trade in Altice, the French telecoms investment group that has grabbed headlines this year for its takeover of French mobile phone company SFR – and which is now in a takeover battle for Portugal Telecom.

The covered bond market has started to lose some of the energy and excitement that followed the announcement of the European Central Bank’s purchase programme. This week, BPCE issued a finely tuned deal that was sized precisely to demand.

Total on Wednesday priced a €1bn floating rate note and an €850m fixed rate bond, just a day after it issued a six year sterling deal.