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Telecom Italia has launched a €1.5bn to €2bn convertible bond with a 70% premium this evening, which market participants said appeared designed to raise cheap funding, without taking the risk of the bond actually converting to equity.

Emmanuel Girod, the ex-co-head of Europe, the Middle East and Africa equity-linked trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London, is set to join Citigroup, also based in London.

Volkswagen launched an unexpected hybrid bond on Tuesday, into a corporate bond market weakened by falling rates and heavy supply, and failed to tighten the pricing from initial guidance.

Nordic Nanovector, the Norwegian biotech company, has increased the size of its initial public offering in Oslo to reflect strong investor demand for the deal.

Equity accelerated bookbuild activity was lively this week, reflecting generally buoyant stock markets and investors eager for paper as quantitative easing begins to bite.

Norway’s DNB did not inspire on its additional tier one debut on Thursday, failing to attract the same level of interest Swedish peers achieved in recent weeks, with bankers on and away from the deal blaming a weaker market backdrop.

The UK authorities have laid out how they expect the new Senior Managers Regime to work in practice, including the controversial presumption of responsibility.

The hot demand in Europe's credit markets has already brought a stream of US investment grade borrowers to issue in euros. This week, four US high yield issuers rated single-B joined the caravan, writes Victor Jimenez.

In a busy night of block trade activity on Monday, the standout deal — though not the biggest — was a 9.98% capital increase by Delta Lloyd, the Dutch insurance company.

Slovenia printed its longest ever bond on Wednesday, a 20 year, taking advantage of a near halving of its spreads since the start of this year to print inside Spanish levels.

The senior market took a breather in the latter part of this week, with a struggling secondary market encouraging issuers to allow investors time to digest recent supply.

US buysiders are struggling to access overseas liquidity as many dealers do not want to trade with US clients due to regulations, such as Dodd-Frank, resulting in increased fragmentation and smaller liquidity pools.