ING

Tranche 2: €750m

Autoroutes du Sud de la France, the French toll road operator, tested the investment grade euro corporate bond market’s taste for tenor on Thursday with a 10 year trade.

Invitations are out for a $1.8bn Asian loan that will refinance a US term loan B for Novelis. The launch comes about a month after the firm mandated 10 lenders to arrange the borrowing.

Syndication of the acquisition financing loans for Lonza and Sibanye Gold is expected to begin soon, as loans bankers begin 2017 in an optimistic mood.

BMW formed part of the auto sector’s traditional charge from pole position into the first corners of the corporate bond market on Wednesday, beginning the new year with a dual tranche trade that paid single digit concessions.

DNB Boligkreditt got the Nordic covered bond market off to a blistering start on Wednesday with a €2bn five year deal that leads were able to tighten by 5bp from initial guidance.

Loan facilities backing Mid Europa Partners’ acquisition of Romanian retail chain Profi Rom Food will go into general syndication this month, with a fifth bank joining the bookrunners and tranche prices having been indicated to ‘early bird’ lenders.

Syndication of Elysium Healthcare’s reduced £133m loan has run over into 2017 at investors’ requests, according to a banker on the deal, as the European leveraged loan market returns with expectations of a healthy New Year pipeline.

Two supranational borrowers have accessed capital markets for niche currency private placements in the past week, as investors spy possible re-entry points in currencies that have suffered throughout 2016.

A subsidiary of Malaysian telecommunications company Axiata Group has expanded the bookrunner group of a $400m loan, which was overhauled and boosted from the original $100m in November.

The Z5.14bn (€1.16bn) of loans for the leveraged buy-out of Allegro, the Polish online marketplace, have been allocated, with the leads choosing zloty rather than senior or junior euro bonds for the second lien piece.

Four European lenders have turned down a $2bn loan for National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), while local banks are starting to return to secondary markets for the first time in a year — signs that the Middle Eastern loan market could see a different set of banks driving it in 2017. Elly Whittaker reports.