Natixis

The Spanish bank has mandated leads for a roadshow to market what will be its first covered bond in six years.

Société Anonyme de Gestion de Stocks de Sécurité (Sagess) has picked four banks to arrange an investor roadshow for a euro bond, its first to be eligible for purchase by the European Central Bank.

Rating: Aa2/AA/AA

Oman locked down $1.5bn this week, pricing “wisely” with a decent new issue premium and kicking off a busy few weeks of issuance from the Gulf Corporation Council’s oil rich, but cash poor, sovereigns as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia ready trades.

Agence France Trésor tapped into strong pent-up demand to draw a bumper book and print its largest inflation linked benchmark since the 2008 financial crisis — despite offering just a few basis points of new issue premium.

Indra Sistemas, the Spanish software company, joined this week’s flurry of convertible bond deals on Wednesday, by launching a buy-back and new issue, rather like Crédit Agricole had done the day before with its exchangeable into Eurazeo shares.

Phoenix Group Holdings, the UK life insurer and asset manager, will carry out a £735m rights issue to partly finance its takeover of Abbey Life, which it announced on Wednesday morning, causing its share price to rise by 3.6%.

Oman left a chunky new issue premium on the table with its latest $1.5bn bond sale, but with competing supply looming, and a market backdrop that included two pulled trades, EM bankers said it was a prudent move that resulted in a great trade and over $4bn of orders.

Ghana Coco Board (Cocobod), which oversees the processing and marketing of cocoa in the African country, has named the 23 international lenders providing its yearly loan of $1.8bn.

The ebullient tone that characterised the first three weeks of September has faded as investors begin to fret over the US presidential election on November 8, but there is still life in the SSA market.

A flurry of equity-linked bond transactions were launched in France this week, including an exchangeable from Crédit Agricole into Eurazeo shares, a rare hybrid perpetual deal from Eramet, the mining company, and a similar €160m buyback by Assystem. And in Spain, Indra Systemas got cracking with its own refinancing exchangeable.

A pair of public sector borrowers were able to sell tightly priced euro deals on Tuesday, with another two trades likely to follow on Wednesday.