LBBW

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa has become the third European bank in 10 days to sell its first social bond, weighing into an under-serviced part of the market for socially responsible investors.

Islamic Development Bank on Wednesday priced a five year sukuk bond, coming to market alongside Samba, a Saudi Arabia based bank. The deals are the latest in a flood of Middle East issuance that has raised $13.35bn this week alone.

Investors bid a warm welcome to a heap of new bonds from financial institutions this week, spurred on by the knowledge that the European Central Bank would soon be back as one of the biggest buyers in the market. Bill Thornhill and Tyler Davies report.

LBBW joined CaixaBank is raising social bond funding in the euro market this week, but the German lender struggled to build up demand and tighten pricing for its €500m deal.

The European Investment Bank and Nordic Investment Bank kept the strong momentum going in the SSA euro bond market on Wednesday, capitalising on the European Central Bank’s announcement of fresh stimulus last week and a lack of issuance over the summer. However, Joint Laender's deal was only just oversubscribed, which the leads attributed to investors’ hesitance to buy a negative yielding 10 year bond from a less liquid name.

Fresh from the announcement of a new stimulus package by the European Central Bank last week, investors stormed into the euro public sector bond market on Tuesday, led by KfW and Bpifrance. The latter printed €1.25bn, equaling its biggest ever single issue. The strong momentum is set to continue with a string of mandates, including two supranationals for Wednesday.

LBBW issued a well subscribed €650m nine year public sector loan-backed Pfandbrief on Monday at a relatively tight new issue concession compared with many recent negative yielding covered bonds.

Volumes in other syndicated loan markets may be down, but bankers in the Schuldschein market have rather more to crow about. Derided though it may be for being antique and parochial, it has nonetheless managed to attract an impressive number of debut entrants this year and is set to break the record volumes of 2017.

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.

Deutsche Pfandbriefbank was marketing a five year senior preferred bond in the euro market on Thursday. The deal was launched at a spread unmoved from price thoughts, with order books only €125m larger than the deal size.

German healthcare company Fresenius has launched a Schuldschein across three tenors.

With no major new issues in sight, the high yield bond market has been dominated by the news of troubled businesses struggling to come up with credible turnaround plans.