Germany

Pressure eased on Volkswagen’s bonds on Wednesday, as investors took stock and waited for the next turn of the company’s saga. Martin Winterkorn resigned as CEO in the afternoon, but that was hardly a surprise.

NRW.Bank has priced a benchmark at the tight end of guidance in the busiest dollar SSA market in several weeks — one that could still host a few more deals.

A near tripling of Volkswagen credit spreads on Monday and Tuesday this week, along with a sharp widening of other names in the European autos sector, is a kneejerk reaction that is likely to be corrected soon, according to some traders and strategists.

The capital markets beating for Volkswagen worsened today, as the German car manufacturer’s bonds widened again in secondary markets.

German car parts maker Schaeffler on Monday issued a full redemption notice for all bonds issued by its holding company as it seeks to create a new financing structure.

A German agency is set to bring the second dollar benchmark from an SSA this week — quadrupling the number of such deals in September so far.

Scout24 on Monday launched the bookbuilding phase of a Frankfurt initial public offering that could value the car and home sales website company at between €2.9bn and €3.5bn.

Covestro, the polymers division of Bayer, began bookbuilding on Monday for its early October initial public offering, which is intended to raise €2.5bn, entirely from the issue of new shares.

Volkswagen's bonds widened as much as 35bp today (Monday September 21), after the company shocked markets by admitting it had deceived US regulators over pollution emissions from diesel vehicles.

Daimler, the German auto company, has come to market with the first sterling offering by any borrower since August, albeit in the modest form of a £125m tap.

Covered bond issuers failed to take heed of poor market conditions and, just like lemmings, followed one another with poorly performing deals this week.

NordLB