Germany

The State of North Rhine-Westphalia more than doubled the record size for a green bond from a European sub-sovereign, pricing a deal several basis points inside initial price thoughts on Wednesday.

The first negative yielding covered bond, which was issued on Tuesday by Berlin Hyp, was almost an inevitability. But given the psychological resistance and reputational risk involved in selling such a deal, the outcome was by no means a foregone conclusion. The deal's resounding success should mean more will now follow.

Issuers lined up to print in euros on Tuesday as a vital European Central Bank meeting loomed later in the week — but bankers were divided as to how much the flurry of deals was down to concerns over the central bank meeting.

Berlin Hyp (BHH) issued the first negative yielding fixed rate euro covered bond on Tuesday, days before the European Central Bank is expected to lower the discount rate into even more negative territory.

Core eurozone issuers are set to pepper the euro curve over the next two days, before all attention turns to a much anticipated European Central Bank meeting on Thursday.

Senvion, the German wind turbine maker, has set the price range for its Frankfurt initial public offering at a level that implies a heavy discount to its main listed peers.

Intercontinental Exchange’s assertion this week that it is mulling an offer for the London Stock Exchange Group, along with rumours of rival interest from CME, has ushered in a ‘phoney war’ with main suitor Deutsche Börse, say market participants — but the ensuing battle makes the future of LSE’s clearing business far from certain.

KfW

Investment fund Aurelius attempted to sell its entire 51% stake in German beverage group Berentzen Gruppe on Tuesday, but eventually cut the offering by more than half when it realised it would not get the price it hoped for.

Porsche AG has grown its Schuldschein from the launch size of €200m to €1.1bn, in another big deal for the private debt market.

The smallest of Wednesday’s three corporate bond issues in Europe was Grenkeleasing’s €125m 5.1 year bond, led by BayernLB, Commerzbank and DZ Bank.

Danske issued in a larger size and attracted more orders for its covered bond than Deutsche Bank did for its deal. The outcome was surprising given Deutsche’s rarity and higher quality collateral. But in any case the German issuer did well given that it could have done the deal without any support from the Eurosystem.