ING

ING completed a deal in the Tokyo Pro-Bond market this week, raising over $1bn equivalent on a week in which it could not find acceptable demand in dollars. It was also able to distribute notes to regional banks before debt counting towards total loss absorbing capacity (TLAC) weighs more heavily on those buyers’ balance sheets.

A short surge in risk appetite on Monday was not durable enough for ING Groep to proceed with a dollar tier two bond transaction on terms it felt were reasonable this week. The Dutch firm became the latest FIG issuer to pull a trade after announcing initial price thoughts.

Element Materials Technology, the UK materials testing company owned by Bridgepoint, was looking for a small loan extension this week, and seeking consent from its investors for higher leverage ratios under the loan covenants.

Austrian oil and gas company OMV sold its first senior corporate bonds of 2018 on Monday after it attracted €3.9bn of demand for a pair of €500m notes with five year and 10 year tenors.

French postal operator La Poste saved the corporate bond market in Europe from registering a blank week when it sold its first green bond last Friday. On Wednesday, Deutsche Post followed its peer’s lead by announcing a deal with the same tenor.

Edenred, the French operator of employee benefit schemes, discovered on Thursday that investors still have cash to put to work in the corporate bond market, even though eight deals had been priced in the first three days of the week and the end of the year is in sight.

Borealis, the Austrian petrochemicals maker, sold its largest corporate bond tranche on Wednesday. The deal came two days after Austrian oil and gas company OMV, which owns more than a third of Borealis, had issued its own dual tranche deal.

Mercuria Energy Group bagged a bigger-than-expected $1.35bn from its latest annual revolver in Asia, after 36 banks joined the deal.

Electricité de France has extended and amended its €4bn revolving credit facility to link it to environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, as green-centric loans continue to gain traction among borrowers.

UK listed fund GCP Infrastructure has increased the size of its revolving credit facilities to £165m, as the infrastructure investment company continues to draw heavily on its bank lending lines.

Belgian chemicals manufacturer Solvay sold its first public corporate bonds for three years on Tuesday when it reopened the European hybrid bond market, which has not seen a new issue since September. Despite the recent dearth of issuance, the market is still set to record an increase of more than 57% on 2017’s total volume.

Neither ABN Amro nor Raiffeisen Bank International were hanging around after a brighter start for financial markets on Monday, with the duo using the opportunity to open books on new preferred senior transactions.