ING

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.

Credit Suisse was marketing a 10 year bullet senior bond on Tuesday, avoiding negative yields by choosing a tenor longer than seven years. At the same time, Sparebank 1 announced it was readying its green debut in senior format.

Russian companies are showing more interest in euro-denominated loans, as funding in the currency becomes cheaper and as US sanctions complicate borrowers’ access to dollars. Siberian Anthracite is expected to close a loan refinancing with a new euro tranche this week, and at least two Russian borrowers are in preliminary discussions with international lenders.

Two near-investment grade industrials made a splash in the high yield bond market on Monday, with both Smurfit Kappa and Thyssenkrupp getting their order books oversubscribed multiple times.

Mizuho issued five year and 10 year senior bonds this week, fixing spreads for the two instruments at 65bp and 67bp, respectively.

Standard & Poor's has affirmed Romania's investment grade rating, at BBB- with a stable outlook. The central European sovereign escaped a downgrade to junk status, but bond auctions this week will determine appetite for the credit.