Nordea Markets

A triumvirate of covered bond issuers from Denmark and Norway enjoyed stellar demand for their euro covered bond benchmarks this week.

Finland launched its first ever dual tranche deal on Wednesday, scoring €3bn with a five year leg and €1.5bn at 30 years. The issue comes on the heels of an immensely popular Belgian barbell printed on Tuesday.

Belgium defied turmoil afflicting European government bond spreads this week, pulling in big books for a dual tranche euro benchmark. The sovereign's success may have emboldened Finland to follow suit with its own barbell transaction.

Investors wasted no time posting orders for Sparebank Vest Boligkreditt’s covered bond issued on Tuesday, a deal which ticked all the right boxes for maturity and spread, despite concerns from Moody's about the sustainability of Norwegian house prices.

Europe’s equity block trade market kicked into a higher gear this week, with a rush of deals including big trades in Lonza, Worldpay and Dong Energy. The Dong trade on Thursday night, worth Dkr6.5bn (€874m), pushes the week’s total above €3bn.

After four busy weeks, European corporate bond market on Wednesday was deserted but for a benchmark deal from Avinor, the Norwegian state-owned airport operator.

Shares in Diös Fastigheter, the Swedish property company, closed 4.5% higher on Thursday after it completed its Skr1.85bn ($209m) rights issue to partly finance the acquisition of a portfolio of mainly commercial and retail properties from Castellum in cities in northern Sweden.

Christian Hansen, head of equity capital markets Denmark at Nordea, has left the bank on Thursday this week, in order to join Danske Bank in the summer.

SpareBank1 Boligkreditt, Aareal Bank and Nordea took advantage of strong demand for five year paper to issue oversubscribed deals this week, paying virtually no new issue concession.

Swedish Match is selling a 9% stake in Scandinavian Tobacco Group, the Copenhagen-listed cigar and pipe tobacco producer, this evening (Wednesday) though an accelerated bookbuild led by Deutsche Bank and Nordea.

Sparebank 1 Boligkreditt and Aareal Bank issued well oversubscribed covered bonds on Wednesday, paying virtually no new issue concession. Both banks took advantage of enduring demand for five year tenors, while for Aareal the issue was cheaper than the European Central Bank’s term liquidity.

Nordea Mortgage Bank (NMB) was set to issue its largest covered bond in three years with a well subscribed order book and a modest concession. At the same time, La Banque Postale returned with its now regular annual covered bond funding.