Germany

Corporate bond investors were offered 10 year and 11.5 year new issues on Wednesday and combined order books of over €4.4bn showed there is significant demand for longer tenors in this market.

KfW on Wednesday posted a clear sign that the path to 10 year dollars is wide open for public sector borrowers, printing a $3bn global that was the largest trade in the tenor for 2.5 years. That left SSA bankers rubbing their hands and speculating over which borrower might come next.

Telefonica Deutschland has been forced to issue a second round of price guidance on its €150m Schuldschein issue after launching it in early January, after investors' demand was cooler than expected.

Corporate bond investors were treated to a relative feast of issuance on Wednesday following a meagre €850m of supply in the first two days of the week. A trio of higher beta names offered a variety of tenors and spreads for investors to choose from.

Public sector borrowers wrapped up a trio of short end dollar trades on Tuesday, with the tightest issuer able to grind in pricing to the lowest level from an SSA this year and the higher yielding names finding ample demand despite ending up at similar spreads. SSA bankers are confident that the strong conditions will also ring true at the long end for KfW, which has mandated for its first 10 year dollar benchmark in nearly three years.

Porsche has launched a Schuldschein, priced at about half the spreads on its previous €1.1bn offering in March 2016.

DekaBank, BayernLB, Berlin Hyp and Deutsche Pfandbriefbank took the opportunity to issue in small sizes across the full range of maturities with deals that were all priced with a double digit spread through mid-swaps.

HIG Capital has acquired a controlling stake in German manufacturing firm Beinbauer Group. The fund used financing from direct lender Beechbrook Capital, with both borrower and lender praising the flexibility of the evolving direct lending market.

IKB Deutsche Industriebank, an unrated German financial institution, was selling tier two capital in the euro bond market on Monday.

Instone Real Estate Group, the German housebuilder, plans to go public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in February, having filed an intention to float document on Monday.

The German private nursing care group Alloheim Senioren-Residenzen is out with a new leveraged loan offering to fund its buyout by Nordic Capital. This loan is among the first deals to be lined up to close in February, as hopes build of a surge of merger and acquisition driven borrowing.

Germany's domestic central bank said this week that it would start buying renminbi assets. Andreas Dombret, a member of the board at the Bundesbank, indicated to GlobalRMB that the central bank — like others in the developed markets — would follow the European Central Bank’s small initial allocation to the currency.