Germany

The European high yield market this week saw towering deals like SoftBank’s $4.5bn and Synlab’s €1.1bn, but investors also found a place in their portfolios for smaller notes.

Germany dominated covered bond supply this week with four banks raising €2.5bn after collecting orders of nearly €6bn in total.

Ado Properties, the Berlin-focused residential property company, priced its relaunched IPO on Wednesday at the bottom of its price range. The shares fell 2.5% on their debut on Thursday.

Synlab, the German laboratory services provider, is being acquired by private equity firm Cinven. The deal will be partly funded with €1.08bn of high yield debt which was priced on Thursday.

Akbank AG, the Frankfurt based subsidiary of Turkey’s Akbank, has completed a $205m refinancing and increased the syndicate to 19 banks.

Little more than a week after its successful initial public offering, the reprivatized Deutsche Pfandbriefbank issued a €500m five year Pfandbrief that was priced closer than ever to its highly regarded peers, LBBW and Helaba. At the same time, WL Bank issued one of the tightest and most oversubscribed Pfandbriefe of the year.

Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen issued a four year mortgage backed Pfandbrief on Wednesday, meeting its targets for size and spread. Bankers were hopeful that more covered bonds would emerge on Thursday, as conditions were good for both core and peripheral names.

Following successful deals from Berlin Hyp on Tuesday and Helaba on Wednesday, two more German issuers have mandated leads. WL Bank and Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (Pbb) are expected to open books on Thursday, respectively for five and seven year benchmarks.

German Startups Group Berlin withdrew its IPO this week, having failed to achieve coverage on the deal, according to a person close to the situation.

World Bank joined a swarm of issuers looking to print in the dollar market with a mandate on Tuesday for the first 10 year benchmark in seven weeks.

DVB Bank SE made an opportunist move into the market on Tuesday after announcing a four year trade on Monday.

Berlin Hyp (BHH) priced a €500m three year Pfandbrief on Tuesday, of which nearly half was sold to international investors. The broad distribution, which came as a positive surprise, suggests an overriding investor need to shorten duration, which in turn implies fear of further volatility this year.