Lloyds Bank

The UK Debt Management Office (DMO) breezed through the final syndication of its financial year on Tuesday, printing at a record low real yield with its biggest ever book — despite a postponed start to opening books and murmurings about falling demand for inflation linked paper.

The UK Debt Management Office on Tuesday breezed through the final syndication of its financial year, printing at a record low real yield despite a postponed start to opening books and murmurings about falling demand for inflation linked paper.

The UK is set to bring its final syndication of its 2016/17 financial year this week, following on from a strong week for public sector trades in the currency.

Nationwide Building Society this week issued its first euro benchmark covered bond since the UK’s referendum on leaving Europe and managed to find funding that was two years longer and half the spread of its last deal in February 2016. But it was unable to issue a 15 year.

Nationwide sold a €1bn seven year euro benchmark covered bond on Thursday, its first trip to the market this year.

UK mortgage lender Together Financial was the only new deal in the European high yield bond market of the week when, on Wednesday, it sold a sterling offering that received firm demand in a rare example of a single-B name opting for bonds over leveraged loans.

Bankers and investors believe Europe’s election schedule will drive up rates on new high yield bonds and increase the attraction of leveraged loans to issuers — even as Together Financial’s new sterling offering kept the market alive.

Swiss petrochemicals firm Ineos priced a €4.5bn-equivalent four tranche term facility refinancing at the tight end of guidance on Monday, taking advantage of a leveraged loan market where abundant demand and scarce new paper is grinding down margins and encouraging a wave of refinancings.

BP Capital Markets brought a £400m bond to the market on Thursday that was priced in line with initial price thoughts, causing disagreement between bankers on and off the execution about where marketing levels should have started.

Ineos, the energy conglomerate, launched a refinancing and repricing loan deal on Monday afternoon, extending the run of issuers coming back to cut funding costs in the market.

Although the European high yield market priced only one sterling issuer this week, some debt advisers say the pipeline is building up.

Following Lloyds Bank's creation of the "CB markets" division, combining trading with capital markets origination, James Garvey, the division’s boss, has laid out the management team for the new structure.