NatWest Markets

While Brexit negotiations continued and banks juggled their contingency plans for various outcomes, two UK corporate issuers successfully accessed the euro corporate bond market this week.

On Wednesday, UK contract catering company Compass Group joined the euro corporate bond market rush with a new 10 year tranche as well as selling a seven year sterling tranche.

The autumn term has definitely begun in Europe’s corporate bond market. BMW and Daimler, which launched deals last week, may have been the scholarship swots who returned extra-early, but this week the whole sweaty gang of issuers is back en masse, and making plenty of noise.

Russia’s Mechel has signed a $1bn-equivalent loan facility, as the metals and mining group pushes ahead with plans to restructure its debt portfolio by the end of 2018.

The UK’s Octopus Investments has signed a £174m loan package to refinance a biomass and landfill gas portfolio.

NatWest Markets has come a long way since the dark days of its repeated restructurings. For a while, RBS was a punchline for gallows humour about the state of investment banking (not to mention the participation of the state in investment banking). Senior bankers jumped or were pushed, while the firm closed offices, sold off its US operations, trimmed its ambitions and seemed ready to settle down as a bit-part domestic player in the capital markets. But it is often darkest before the dawn.

The financing for the €1bn acquisition of roofing business Imerys Toiture to Lone Star Funds was revised this week to include a subordinated debt tranche, as levfin investors still active in August pocket riskier but higher yielding paper.

A pair of taps from the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) and KfW on Tuesday — ahead of the Bank of England’s expected rate rise later this week — ensured the non-UK sterling SSA market remains on track for a record year of issuance.

WiZink Bank sold its buyout payment-in-kind (PIK) bonds in the euro high yield market this week, a rare opportunity for high yield investors given the slim volumes from the financial sector and Iberian issuers this year.

Värde Partners plans to fund the acquisition of Spanish consumer credit bank WiZink with payment in kind (PIK) notes, a type of high yield issuance that borrowers have barely used in the last 18 months.

A banker has moved from NatWest Markets to work on insurance DCM at BNP Paribas.

NatWest Markets is fifth in Dealogic’s European sovereign bond bookrunner league table, a big leap on this time last year as it expands its presence across the SSA market — including into the dollar sector.