Nordics

Finland has cut the number of its solicited credit ratings from three to two after removing Moody’s, leaving the sovereign with scores from Fitch and S&P Global.

Kommunalbanken, the financing agency for Norwegian municipalities, and L–Bank, the development bank for the State of Baden–Württemberg, built well covered order books as they brought what will likely be the SSA market’s final dollar benchmark deals of 2020.

The Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, is adding a “negative screening” process to its purchases of corporate bonds under its quantitative easing programme, meaning it will no longer buy the bonds of the most polluting companies.

Kommunalbanken and L-Bank will each bring a dollar benchmark to the market on Tuesday, in what could be the final public SSA deals in the currency this year.

Italy returned to the private placement market to print one of the year’s largest MTNs on Thursday. The deal stood out this week, since issuance in the market has started to wind down ahead of Christmas.

European banks are running out of ways of selling senior bonds at positive yields. A near-miss from Svenska Handelsbanken this week was enough to convince the market that it’s only a matter of time before an issuer breaks the 0% barrier, write Tyler Davies and Frank Jackman.

Shares in Nordnet rose in the aftermarket after the digital bank began trading on Nasdaq Stockholm on Wednesday, following its Skr9bn (€885m) IPO.

Swedish property company Fastighets AB Balder has tapped the equity capital markets for financing, selling Skr9.44bn (€288m) of fresh stock.

TryghedsGruppen, the majority shareholder in Danish insurance group Tryg, completed a 21m share sale in Copenhagen last night to reduce its stake before a rights issue next year.

The IPO of Nordnet, the Swedish digital bank and investment management platform, is due to be priced at Skr96, the midpoint of the initial range, when bookbuilding ends on Monday.

Kommuninvest and the Kingdom of Sweden both took to the market this week, pulling off successful trades in a buoyant market.

Sweden set out on Friday how it will apply the EU’s latest capital rules to its banks. Market participants highlighted that the planned changes would give issuers less headroom over the coupon cancellation threshold for their additional tier ones (AT1s).