Natixis

Ghana Cocoa Board held a successful roadshow in London on Friday for its annual cocoa harvest loan financing, according to a banker on the deal.

On Tuesday, Gecina, the French property company, latched onto the latest trend for issuance in the multi-tranche European corporate bond. The triple tranche €1.5bn deal will be used to refinance part of the bridge facility used by Gecina to acquire Eurosic.

Most new bond issues in Europe this week have been multi-tranche offerings, with issuers benefitting from investor appetite to buy longer tenors for greater returns. Safran, however, bucked that trend with a pair of short dated floating rate notes.

Calls are growing louder for sovereigns to pull their weight and assume a leading role in the development of the green bond market. But, as was demonstrated at panels in Euromoney’s Global Borrowers & Bond Investors Forum this week, many of them are reluctant to take up the SRI baton, write Lewis McLellan and Sharon Kimathi.

Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), the Paris transport authority, printed its inaugural green bond on Thursday, selling a €500m no-grow into a thrice oversubscribed book and pulling the price in 5bp from guidance.

A syndicated loan for Gunvor Singapore has been allotted, with more than 20 banks joining the mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners at the end of general syndication.

Two more dual tranche bond deals were priced in euros on Wednesday. BP followed a similar path to previous issues this week, printing eight year and 12 year tranches. However Safran, the French defence company, printed two year and four year floating rate notes.

Arabtec Holding, the United Arab Emirates’ largest listed construction firm, said on Tuesday its rights issue was fully subscribed, raising Dh1.5bn ($408m) for a recapitalisation.

Plastic Omnium, the unrated French car parts maker, on Monday became the first company that had held a European bond roadshow last week to launch a deal.

European corporate bond markets have quickly shrugged off the uncertainty surrounding the UK election result and central bank meetings, and look set for a busy end to June.

It is often suggested that issuers have to pay up for issuing sub-benchmark sized deals. However, this week two corporate issuers printed successful €300m transactions with little discernible premium compared to benchmark transactions.

Foncière des Régions printed the only new corporate bond issue on Tuesday. The €500m 10 year deal got a similar reception to TenneT’s dual tranche deal the day before. The level of oversubscription was lower than other deals in recent weeks, but the order book was good quality.