Morgan Stanley

High yield bankers insist that the European market will not be paralysed by some of the banks holding debt they have been unable to sell, even after the failure of last week's €1.55bn financing for LeasePlan.

(updated with more detailed analysis 2.20pm) Vodafone is today issuing an unprecedented £2.88bn mandatory convertible bond, with many innovative features, that combines aspects of two recent trends in the market: the equity-neutral CB and the subordinated, equity-accounted deal.

Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, the Belgian investment holding company, took advantage of Total’s strong market performance on three consecutive days to sell €651m of stock in the French oil and gas company on Tuesday night.

The long wait for a European block trade ended on Tuesday night, as a shareholder in Total sold €651m-worth of stock in the French oil and gas business, sparking hopes of further ECM deals in coming days.

A protracted slump in equity markets has pushed some risk measures in the US and Asia to extremes.

Samsung SDI is in the process of choosing leads to run the sale of its shares in Samsung C&T later this month, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group is set to break new ground in Asia with an inaugural offering of bonds that meet total loss-absorbing capacity (TLAC) requirements.

Despite the flimsy state of Europe's high yield market, its sister leveraged loan business remains vibrant, and this year is the most open of the four main leveraged finance markets: bonds and loans in dollars and euros, writes Max Bower.

Royal Dutch Shell has cancelled its £10.07bn ($14.56bn) bridge loan, instead opting to pay for the cash element of its $82bn acquisition of BG Group with cash on balance sheet.

Pharmaceuticals firm Shire completed the syndication of an $18bn acquisition loan on Friday and will use proceeds to buy rare disease specialist Baxalta.

Keurig Green Mountain, the US speciality coffee and coffee machine firm, increased the euro term loan ‘B’ tranche of the $6.4bn debt package backing its acquisition by JAB Holding, the German investment group.

Derivatives market prices reflect growing uncertainty over the UK's forthcoming referendum on European Union membership, analysts said this week, even though the vote will not be held before June at the earliest and the Brexit campaign is widely expected to fail.