JP Morgan

The bookbuild for the IPO of Spie —the French electrical, telecoms and technical services company — was launched on Monday June 1, and was covered on the first day.

While liquidity in all markets is worse than it was pre-crisis, high yield bonds have seen the smallest downturn – and liquidity has picked up since 2012, according to research from JP Morgan.

Corporate bond issuers hung back from issuing in euros on Monday, as markets made a soft opening. But the pipeline continued to fill and issuers like Eurogrid and Mohawk Industries are in the offing.

Powerhouse Habitat, an unusual French property company that owns housing for nuclear power station workers, began premarketing on Monday June 1 for a Paris IPO of at least €370m. BNP Paribas and JP Morgan are global co-ordinators.

Valeo Foods, the Irish food producer, has closed books on a €595m loan to finance its acquisition of Balconi and refinance debt.

Banks steered clear of the European bond markets on Monday, as the vast majority of last week’s primary prints languished wide of their re-offer levels.

Darling Ingredients, the Texas-based food ingredients maker, sold a €515m senior unsecured bond to yield 4.75% on Friday, even as French cable manufacturer Nexans was pulling its €250m deal.

Massimo Zanetti Beverage Group, the Italian coffee company, priced its IPO at the bottom end of the range early in the morning on Friday May 29, after a bookbuild that was slow but achieved a good result, according to a banker on the deal.

Credit trading desks at banks have been swept by a tornado of job moves, as financial institutions specialists leave or jump to rival firms in a scramble to survive in a shrinking market.

Home Depot and Time Warner led a flurry of corporate borrowers on Thursday as the dollar market closed in on a record month for issuance.

Cinven announced on Thursday that it would buy Labco, the French medical diagnostics firm, the third time this year that a private equity firm has swept up a company that had failed to IPO, or where the flotation had found weak demand.

Eli Lilly, the US pharmaceuticals company, made its euro bond debut on Tuesday, printing seven, 11 and 15 year notes and proving that the market is still open for longer dated paper — at a price.