ING

The first deal of the September rush set an impressive bar for a rush of borrowing from its peers in the commodities sector. Russia's Severstal pulled off an $800m five year bond priced flat to its curve, achieving the lowest yield ever for a corporate from the region.

Severstal, a Russian steel manufacturer, hit screens on Monday morning with a five year dollar benchmark.

De Volksbank was three times subscribed for its debut green bond this week, despite not offering much in the way of yield or new issue premium to its investors.

The Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO), made its Uzbekistani som debut this week to take advantage of funds flowing into EM currencies thanks to low rates in dollars. Elsewhere, euro investors are looking at the ultra-long end of the SSA market.

Credit Suisse and SpareBank 1 priced deals in senior format this week, choosing longer maturities to avoid entering negative yield territory. SpareBank 1’s €500m green bond attracted demand of €700m but leads were not able to tighten pricing to the tight end of their price guidance.

The frenzy of investment grade corporate bond issuance in Europe intensified on Thursday, when eight companies came to market, issuing a total of €6.6bn of paper in euros. That brought the total for the first four days of this week to over €20bn. Despite the heavy supply, issuers have found sufficient demand to support their notes.

Investors were given a double dose of green paper from the Philippines this week, as Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) rolled out a $300m sustainability bond a day after Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) sealed a green deal.

Ukrainian grain and sunflower producer Kernel is set to amend and extend an existing syndicated loan, according to bankers familiar with the deal. The transaction marks one of the few intermittent spots of activity in the Ukrainian loan market.

Sparebank 1 priced a seven year senior preferred bond in green format on Wednesday at mid-swaps plus 65bp. The €500m bond attracted demand of €700m but leads were not able to tighten pricing to the full extent of their ambitions.

A new flurry of investment grade corporate bond issuers jumped into the market on Wednesday morning, after Danaher priced its €6.25bn five-tranche Reverse Yankee note. Getting that deal out of the way gave other corporate borrowers room to bring bonds of their own — and plenty are expected to in the run-up toe the European Central Bank's monetary policy announcement on September 12.

Financial institution investors, desperate for any sort of yield pick-up are keeping their cash away from secondaries in the hope of earning new issue concessions in a rejuvenated primary market.

ING and RiverRock have struck a deal to give the asset manager access to ING’s pipeline of senior loans, as part of the launch of RiverRock’s debut senior loan fund. The Dutch bank, unlike other commercial banks, committed to avoid cherry-picking its pipeline, and to show RiverRock everything that was eligible for the fund.