Morgan Stanley

Coopération Pharmaceutique Française, the French pharmaceuticals distributor known as Cooper, has bank meetings scheduled on Wednesday for more than €350m of new debt for its leveraged buyout by Charterhouse.

Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa sold $1.2bn of 10 and 30 year bonds on Thursday to reignite a Latin American bond market that some had suggested was heading for early hibernation.

Vodafone became the latest blue chip company to exploit the attractive arbitrage offered by the convertible bond market at the moment, by raising £600m on Thursday with a highly sought-after deal that involves no risk of issuing new shares.

The leveraged finance market suffered an unpleasant shock this week, when $5.6bn of loans and bonds for the Carlyle Group’s acquisition of Veritas Software had to be pulled. Bankers were left blaming market sentiment, an aggressive structure — and each other, write Max Bower and Victor Jimenez.

ABN Amro’s shares rose 3.5% on Friday, November 20, after it restarted life as a private sector bank with a successful IPO in Amsterdam. The deal raised €3.34bn and priced at 0.986 times book value, giving the bank a market capitalisation of over €16.7bn.

Shares in Solvay, the Belgian chemical company, closed at €103.65 on Thursday, up 3.1% since Monday night, after shareholders voted to approve the €1.5bn rights issue to finance its takeover of Cytec Industries, the US maker of advanced materials.

Three shareholders in Dongbu Insurance Co pared down their stake in the company via an accelerated share sale on the evening of November 18, raising W343.3bn ($293m).

Allied Irish Banks was in a generous mood on Thursday, launching its first tier two since the crisis at a much higher premium than rival bankers thought necessary.

Bankers and investors on Wednesday said the failure of Veritas Technologies' $2.5bn bond deal — which was pulled along with an accompanying $3.3bn loan package on Tuesday — showed evidence of familiar weaknesses and errors in the European high yield market.

The weakness of the US leveraged finance market was brought home to market participants with a jolt on Tuesday, when the Carlyle Group, which is buying Veritas Technologies, a US data storage company, abandoned its attempt to raise $3.3bn of debt for the deal.

Singaporean utility company SP PowerAssets made a rare outing to the dollar bond market on November 18, raising $700m from a tightly priced 10 year note.

Three shareholders in Dongbu Insurance Co are selling shares worth up to W357bn ($305m), in the first block trade exceeding $100m from South Korea in a month.