Goldman Sachs

Demand was robust for floating rate paper on Tuesday as Commonwealth Bank of Australia sold its first deal of 2015 and Caisse Centrale Desjardins du Quebec (CCDJ) returned to the senior unsecured euro market after an absence of almost five years.

After the extraordinary fireworks of Santander’s €7.5bn block trade on Thursday January 8, the year’s more workaday business in European equity capital markets began in earnest on Monday, as five IPOs were launched.

A week before the European Central Bank is expected to announce a programme of quantitative easing and Greece elects its next president, investors are loading up on senior unsecured paper from top names in FIG, and being paid big new issue premiums. Investors are demanding more in part because of fears of volatility in coming weeks stemming from the ECB and Greece, bankers said.

GF Securities, which made its debut in the loan syndication market in July last year, has now put its sights on the ECM market too, filing for an IPO in Hong Kong.

Santander raised €7.5bn of equity capital in a block trade on Thursday January 8, the biggest ever outside the US, to put its core equity tier one ratio up to 10%. The deal was priced at the low end of the discount range and led to a very steep fall in Santander's share price the day after – yet won some admiration from rival banks.

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) made its return to the offshore debt market on Thursday, January 8, raising a total of $2.25bn through a triple tranche dollar bond that attracted strong demand from investors and allowed bankers to price the deal flat to the borrower’s existing curve.

Tele Columbus, the German cable provider, is finding strong interest in its IPO, the first launched by a European company in 2015.

Banco Santander leapt into an equity market this week that was otherwise empty of deals with a €7.5bn accelerated bookbuild, which bankers expected to be a huge success and an inspiration to other issuers.

Banco Santander leapt into an equity market this week that was otherwise empty of deals with a €7.5bn accelerated bookbuild, which bankers expected to be a huge success and an inspiration to other issuers, writes Olivier Holmey.

The Epiphany holidays in Europe on Tuesday may have disrupted the issuance calendar for the week, but that didn’t stop issuers from printing over €15.5bn of senior unsecured debt in just two days on Wednesday and Thursday.

Europe's leveraged loan market has a pipeline of deals to execute this January after arrangers left their desks for Christmas anticipating a hefty volume of jumbo deals to start the New Year. Despite a drab two days in equity markets not providing the sunniest of openings, deals are beginning to flow out.

The £390m acquisition loan backing CVC’s buyout of Sky Bet, the online gambling arm of television group Sky, will be launched on Friday. It is the second ever all-sterling leveraged finance deal with a covenant-lite term sheet, bankers said.