Nordics

Songa Offshore, the Norwegian oil drilling company that is going through a distressed debt restructuring, completed on Thursday its raising of new money with a convertible bond, getting the maximum size of $125m.

Covered bond borrowers in the UK, Sweden, France, New Zealand and the Netherlands met with strong receptions for their transactions this week, which collectively raised nearly €6bn.

The short end of the dollar curve is enjoying a purple patch, with public sector borrowers drawing big books and pricing with much lower new issue premiums than earlier in the year.

Tokmanni, Finland’s largest general discount retailer, announced on Tuesday its intention to float on Nasdaq Helsinki during the second quarter, selling both new and existing shares.

The European Investment Bank built a book of €8bn for a 10 year Earn on Tuesday as the 10 year Bund yield fell to a 12 month low, leading bankers on the deal to suggest tougher times may lie ahead for euro issuers.

Caisse Française de Financement Local (Caffil) and Länsförsäkringar Hypotek (LF Hyp) got strong receptions for their covered bonds on Tuesday as investors had plenty of fresh money to put to work at the start of what is likely to be a relatively dry quarter.

Natural gas provider Gasum enlisted just two banks to provide a €640m credit facility, part of which will refinance a recent acquisition by the group.

SBAB Bank printed its first euro fixed rate senior bond since 2013 on Monday, raising €500m of May 2021 notes at the start of what market participants believe could be a busy week for FIG supply.

The number of new covered bond issuers grew to five this year after Standard and Poor’s assigned a preliminary AAA rating to the covered bond programme of The Mortgage Society of Finland.

Finnish property investment firm Sponda has completed its €221m rights offering, which it first announced in late February and which will be used to partially repay a bridge loan.

Norske Skogindustrier, the Norwegian manufacturer of paper for publication, announced on Thursday that GSO Capital and Cyrus Capital would provide new securitization and equity financing to save the company.

Rabobank has announced the sale of a €1bn portfolio of mortgages in a move that has pre-positioned the bank for tougher Basel IV regulations. By the time the rules are in force in Europe though, they may look different, especially for countries that are heavy users of covered bonds.