Germany

A new issuer joined the convertible market on Tuesday, when Aurelius, a specialist German private equity firm, issued a €166m bond with a 1% coupon and 30% conversion premium.

BMW has kept its bond issuance going apace in the past fortnight, since it returned to the market for the first time after the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal.

BayernLB issued a well oversubscribed Pfandbrief on Tuesday and priced somewhat tighter, and with a longer maturity, than other recently issued German covered bonds. The pricing showed that German investors can still just about demonstrate differentiation between credits, despite low yields and tight spreads across the board.

SEB Germany’s three year public sector Pfandbrief issued on Tuesday offered the lowest ever yield for a primary covered bond. But some sort of positive return was absolutely necessary, even if it was as tiny as possible.

Edag, the German family-owned car engineering service provider, started taking orders on Monday for its initial public offering in Frankfurt.

DZ Bank has placed a five part inaugural additional tier one (AT1) transaction within its co-operative bank network, which it said opens the door to a mid-size investor base for the product in Germany.

Demand was so strong for an agency bond tap on Thursday that the leads had to ask the issuer to increase the deal, as SSA investors scrambled to get their hands on one of the last large issues of the year.

Aldi, the German discount supermarket chain, has signed a private club loan for around €600m with six banks. The deal is the company's first syndicated loan, according to bankers.

Public sector borrowers are putting the final touches to their funding programmes for the year amid stable market conditions, but there are few signs that any will pre-fund for 2016 in large size.

Financial institutions have begun a final push for funding as year-end approaches, with investors still looking to boost returns with higher beta purchases.

Fresenius SE, the German medical services company, received its second investment grade rating this week with a Moody's one notch upgrade on Monday. But there was little movement in the company's bond prices as market participants said the change had long been priced in.

Rentenbank equalled its second largest euro benchmark size ever while still managing to tighten pricing with a November 2022 on Tuesday.