Germany

The trend for corporate issuers in Europe in 2017 has been to sell bonds with longer tenors. However, among this week’s deals were three short dated floating rate notes, which all garnered huge demand.

KommuneKredit and Erste Abwicklungsanstalt rounded out this week’s dollar issuance in what has become typical fashion for trades over the last few days — oversubscribed books and tightened pricing. But KommuneKredit’s deal featured a novel aspect that SSA bankers hope other issuers will embrace.

Leveraged loan issuance is set to outpace sales of new high yield bonds with a surge this year, pushed by a varied array of borrowers seeking not just tighter margins on old debt, such as US chemical group Angus this week, but also funding for acquisitions, as with Nordic travel operator Etraveli.

The SSA dollar juggernaut is set to roll into a third day, with two deals on screens for Thursday’s business. Investor appetite shows no sign of letting up, as the two deals priced on Wednesday drew large books — as was seen with a host of trades a day earlier.

Several of November’s IPOs in Europe have taken hits in the aftermarket, continuing October’s trend of recently floated companies’ shares trading down.

In October, German chemicals company BASF announced it had agreed to buy parts of Bayer’s seed and non-selective herbicide businesses for €5.9bn, all in cash. On Wednesday it started to fund that with a €3bn triple tranche bond sale.

Public sector borrowers have crammed more dollar deals into Tuesday than are sometimes seen in a week. But far from suffering from too much choice, investors gobbled up everything on offer — and bankers expect them to do just the same for two deals on Wednesday’s menu.

The loan funding for CDPQ and Ardian’s acquisition of a stake in Alvest, the unrated French manufacturer of aeroplane parts, was allocated among a "limited" number of investors on Tuesday, amid growing demand for small and mid-sized credits.

German chemical company Wacker Chemie launched a €150m Schuldschein on Monday that is close to being the tightest priced deal this year.

German car manufacturer Daimler has proven a good medium to track the tightening of euro corporate bond credit spreads in 2017, having issued more than €9bn before the end of October. On Tuesday, a €1bn 10 year deal took that total within €1bn of the issuer’s 2016 total, but it didn’t come cheap.

On Monday night, UBS led the sale of a 0.3% stake in SAP, the German software company, for its co-founder and biggest shareholder, Hasso Plattner. It is the first equity capital markets deal in the stock for 11 years, according to Dealogic.

As investor demand for ESG products grows, an exchange traded fund tracking companies with good policies on gender equality began trading on Euronext this Monday.