Natixis

BPCE has jumped into the tier two market after only announcing on Tuesday it would be meeting investors for a potential sale.

The French are taking over the pipeline for subordinated bank debt, as the country’s second largest bank gets ready to roadshow a sterling denominated tier two deal, joining La Banque Postale in the primary market.

Tullow Oil, the London-listed but Africa-focused oil exploration and production company, has followed up last week's successful bond issue with a $750m refinancing loan.

Caracal Energy, a London-listed oil and gas company, has signed a debut $140m reserve-based senior secured facility to develop its assets in Chad.

Hong Kong-listed Citic Pacific signed its HK$8.8bn ($1.13bn) five year loan on Friday, April 4, which saw two banks joining during syndication.

The French bank has ambitious growth plans that belie its reputation, writes David Rothnie

UniCredit sailed to success with a three year floating rate deal on Thursday, reaffirming the strength of demand from investors for Italian financial paper. Even investors that normally stick to fixed rate paper were lured into the deal by the prospect of picking up Italian risk.

Région Île-de-France will roadshow a new 12 year green sustainability bond next week, which bankers believe could be the first syndicated green bond from a regional government.

Thursday is set to see the first senior unsecured supply of the week, with two euro deals expected to price in the afternoon. Sparebank 1 SR-Bank is selling a seven year benchmark while UniCredit is set to price a three year floater.

Puma Energy, the emerging markets-focused oil products firm, held a well attended bank meeting for its new refinancing loan facility on Wednesday.

Covered bond issuers from Canada, Sweden and Australia gathered together in March as participants in this GlobalCapital roundtable to discuss their markets. Borrowers still have plenty of issuance capacity but their plans for supply are likely to remain steady rather than spectacular over the foreseeable future. Issuers are conserving their covered pool collateral in case unsecured access becomes more constrained due to increased market volatility. Local currency issuance complements US dollar issuance, but for Australians and Canadians, the euro market offers more depth, especially at the long end of the curve. But for many issuers, and especially the Canadians, the cross-currency swap only became attractive in the summer of 2013. Fortunately, this coincided with local legislative programmes becoming operational. Australian, Canadian and Swedish covered bond issuers all benefit from solid senior ratings, stable real estate markets and they all present a great diversification tool. And, with a very limited amount of bonds outstanding in euros, investors have plenty of credit line availability.

Investors are keen for structured medium term notes from supranationals and agencies, but the deals are hard to source, according to MTN dealers.