Germany

Landesbank Hessen-Thüeringen Girozentrale (Helaba) sold the first negative yielding covered bond since 2017 on Wednesday, attracting good demand for the €750m five year Pfandbrief.

Rentenbank failed to achieve subscription for its €500m 10 year trade on Tuesday, despite offering a positive yield and a maturity that has been labelled the ‘sweet spot’ in the euro public sector bond market.

Porsche AG, maker of Porsche sports cars, has returned to the Schuldschein market, on the hunt for funds for research and development into electric cars, among other green projects.

Commerzbank said on Tuesday that it was looking to issue its first ever additional tier one (AT1) instrument, following a roadshow that begins later this week.

UniCredit AG issued its first dollar Pfandbrief on Tuesday, shortly after DekaBank had quickly wrapped up a sub-benchmark eight year. The two deals followed an inaugural sub-benchmark seven year from Slovakia’s Tatra banka that was priced on Monday.

Forth Ports, the port operator with headquarters in Edinburgh, is marketing prospective US private placements this week.

UniCredit’s German subsidiary, HVB, has mandated leads for the first dollar covered bond in its 150 year history reflecting a preference to avoid issuing a negative yielding euro benchmark.

A corner of Europe’s capital markets that up to now has offered both stability and growth — German housing companies — has been thrown into turmoil by a five year rent freeze on all housing, proposed by the State of Berlin, write Silas Brown, Aidan Gregory and Jon Hay.

Agrana, a food producer headquartered in Vienna, is marketing a Schuldschein where its floating notes are some 20bp inside the fixed note offering. Two market participants said they had never seen this before.

Infineon Technologies, the German semiconductor maker, has raised €1.54bn of fresh equity to finance its takeover of Cypress Semiconductor, an American rival, via an accelerated bookbuild.

One of Deutsche Bank’s most senior equity capital markets bankers has resigned after nearly 15 years at the bank to join a rival. The move comes amid reports that Deutsche Bank is preparing to make deep cuts to its equities trading business outside of continental Europe.

FRANKFURT PRIVATE DEBT ROUNDTABLE The Schuldschein market has kept up its momentum across Europe and elsewhere, but two regions have been curiously quiet. Iberia and Italy have implied investment grade borrowers well suited to the market, yet only a few have been tempted to use it. Are there barriers to entry and how can they be overcome?