Morgan Stanley

The largest block trade of 2019 so far — a €1.5bn stake in Dutch payments firm Adyen — flew off the shelves on Monday night, as large long-only accounts, mostly from the US, bought big slices of it.

Embassy Office Parks Real Estate Investment Trust (Reit) has global long-only investors on tenterhooks as it prepares to launch its smaller-than-expected Rp47.5bn ($683m) IPO, having filed the final terms for India’s first Reit listing.

Medacta, the Swiss maker of artificial human joints, has begun a process to list on the SIX Swiss Exchange before Easter. If it succeeds, it would be the first major company to complete an IPO in Europe this year.

SNCF Réseau took advantage of a move in swap spreads and a favourable euro/dollar basis swap to sell its third dollar benchmark on Friday, ahead of what SSA bankers say will be a busy week of supply in the currency. Nordic agencies are among the issuers expected to be come to the dollar market next week.

Telefónica, the Spanish telecoms group with €55bn of debt, came to the euro market on Tuesday to refinance two of its hybrid capital bonds. It launched a tender offer for the pair, which now total €1.3bn, and a hybrid new issue to replace them, tacking on opportunistically a 10 year senior bond issue.

Whether Vodafone’s £3.44bn issue of two and three year mandatorily convertible bonds on Tuesday this week ends up being judged a corporate finance success for the company may take time to discover. But it is already clear it was a great hit with investors — much more so than the first time Vodafone issued the structure in 2016.

Vodafone’s £3.4bn mandatorily convertible bond with share buyback language, sold to huge demand this week, may have created a new financial product. Certainly it will set off a maelstrom of analysis and pitching to clients, as banks seek other companies willing to try this daring structure. Jon Hay and Aidan Gregory report.

The root of arbitrage is the same thing being priced differently in two markets. As markets have got bigger and more sophisticated, arbitrage has become harder to find.

Two Turkish borrowers hit the market on Thursday, following in the wake of a Koç Holding trade earlier in the week and making it Turkey’s busiest week for deals in almost three years.

Dollar SSA issuance is expected to pick up next week, thanks to a change in the euro/dollar basis swap that is making issuance in the currency more attractive for euro funders. There was still a smattering of dollar trades this week, including a Sofr-linked floater that broke new ground for the format.

Shares in Funding Circle Holdings, the UK peer-to-peer lending platform, closed up on Thursday despite the company reporting a widening loss in 2018 because of the costs of its £440m IPO on the London Stock Exchange in September.

The European Central Bank struck a decidedly dovish tone at its meeting on Thursday, meaning there were no nasty surprises for SSAs planning bond issues in the coming days. A French agency is on screens for a deal in dollars this Friday, while euro and dollar benchmarks are slated for next week.