Germany

Germany’s WL Bank priced a €250m tap of its 10 year mortgage backed Pfandbrief on Thursday, taking advantage of the squeezed market to price flat to its curve. Cheaper French covered bonds have performed well lately and profit taking was seen in the UK sector.

Swiss steelmaker Schmolz + Bickenbach opened the euro high yield market on Monday with a sub-benchmark sized deal, extending March’s stream of opportunistic refinancing deals.

Three more IPOs reached successful conclusions on Tuesday and Wednesday, including the largest in Poland for over two years.

FMS Wertmanagement has picked four banks for a short end euro transaction, making the most of the reopening of an area of the curve that has hosted very little public sector issuance in the past year.

The dollar market was on spectacular form on Wednesday, with a Canadian province pushing out a rare 10 year bond, a supranational smashing its size record and a $4bn five year from a German agency.

German government-owned development bank KfW has entered into an agreement with Eurex Clearing that will see its euro denominated interest rate swaps cleared by the Frankfurt central counterparty.

Public sector borrowers are lining up a three pronged attack on Wednesday in a dollar market that is enjoying its widest swap spreads of the year. Quebec is attempting the first 10 year dollar benchmark since the first week of the year, KfW is out in fives — a part of the curve that has also become attractive in euros — and the Inter-American Development Bank is coming at the short end.

The RMB hub in Frankfurt could benefit from London’s loss of Euro-clearing privileges, but for now the focus remains on developing existing platforms including the ground-breaking Sino-German joint venture exchange, Jochen Metzger, director general for payments and settlement systems, Bundesbank, told GlobalRMB.

Rating: A1/A+

The Basel Committee said on Wednesday that it had not figured out how the regulatory capital regime could deal with the IFRS 9 accounting rules set to come in next year and backed a transitional period, as few banks are ready for the ‘capital shock’ that could result.

The European Commission delivered the final blow to a proposed merger between Europe's biggest stock exchange operators, Deutsche Börse and the London Stock Exchange, on Wednesday, but some market observers wondered whether the parties themselves had gone cold on the deal.

The euro market looks set to swing back into full action next week as borrowers launch into their second quarter funding requirements, with an unusual amount of attention clustering around shorter maturities.