Natixis

Europe’s high grade corporate issuers began the week deploying their recent tactic of tightening spreads aggressively during bookbuilding from cheap starting points, with Elia Transmission Belgium ratcheting in its spread by 60bp from initial price thoughts.

BPCE seized an opportunity to launch €1.5bn of preferred senior funding this week — an asset class that has outperformed all other bank funding products in the market in recent trading sessions.

The euro high grade corporate bond market was noticeably calmer this week, but deals for issuers as diverse as Telstra, American Honda, La Poste and Givaudan saw chunky books and shrinking new issue premiums.

France’s La Poste saw almost €14bn of demand for its dual tranche trade on Tuesday, with the state-owned postal service kick-starting the shortened week in style with borrowers expected to start exploring issuance down their capital structures.

Agence Française de Développement (AFD) was the latest public sector agency to head to the euro market this week as it raised €1.5bn on Wednesday with a 10 year benchmark. While the deal was fully subscribed, the order book was not huge and the pricing did not tighten from guidance, indicating that the market may be slowing.

Europe’s top rated corporate bond issuers on Wednesday pushed investors further still, despite the spate of recent deals, with Capgemini bringing the second two year fixed rate bond in as many days and National Grid bringing the longest sterling deal since the coronavirus crisis took hold in the West.

European corporates found a strong bond market on Monday after raising a record amount of bond funding last week, as the European Central Bank pours money into high grade debt.

The power of central bank buying and fund redemptions are evident this week in the European investment grade corporate bond market, where issuers have been squeezed into a narrow range of maturities as they search for cash.

Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer, opened books for a three tranche bond issue on Tuesday, just over a week after raising €15bn from banks, on the assumption, its CFO said then, that there would be "no issuance in capital markets, such as commercial paper".

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Bank of America reopened the market for financial institution bonds in euros this week and was followed by a slew of other deals as investors welcomed wider spreads and new issue concessions.

New issue concessions have tumbled in the high grade corporate bond market today. French industrial gases company Air Liquide has rewritten this week's rules by pricing a bond through its own curve on Thursday.