Nordics

Sparebank 1 priced a seven year senior preferred bond in green format on Wednesday at mid-swaps plus 65bp. The €500m bond attracted demand of €700m but leads were not able to tighten pricing to the full extent of their ambitions.

Raiffeisen Bank International sold a tier two bond this week, tightening pricing by 40bp. The trade was supported by hefty investor demand of €2.7bn, more than six times the deal's €500m size.

Credit Suisse was marketing a 10 year bullet senior bond on Tuesday, avoiding negative yields by choosing a tenor longer than seven years. At the same time, Sparebank 1 announced it was readying its green debut in senior format.

The Swedish National Debt Office, the Riksgalden, has said that it is assessing whether to issue 100 year bonds as it looks to take advantage of ultra low rates. However, the demand for such products has deteriorated in recent weeks as the seismic rally in government bonds continues to suppress yields, according to public sector debt capital bankers.

Westpac placed just under HK$13.4bn into the Hong Kong market across two MTNs last week — the pair of bonds are its largest ever in the currency, according to Dealogic. The notes came in a busy week for niche issuance, and bankers have posited that this move into the peripheral markets comes as a response to the global fall in yields.

The European IPO market has been reopened with the listings of TeamViewer, the German remote access software provider, and Swedish private equity house EQT. However, with investors continuing to position more defensively bankers expect valuation pressure to remain.

Swedish private equity firm EQT confirmed on Monday that it is seeking to list on the Nasdaq Stockholm, becoming the second issuer to announce it aims to test Europe’s IPO market this autumn.

Issuance is starting to resume after the summer break; however, this week a booming public market drew away investor and issuer attention from MTNs. Despite this, a range of established SSA, FIG and corporate borrowers have slipped in, with deals across core, niche and EM currencies.

After two huge days of corporate bond issuance, Thursday was much quieter, with issues only from Vier Gas Transport and SBB Norden — not because the market was worse, but just because most of the issuers that wanted to come this week had crowded into the first two days.

Following its latest euro syndication, the Republic of Finland is looking at a possible return to the dollar market after a two year absence. On Wednesday, demand for the sovereign’s latest bond was high as it printed through the ECB deposit rate to sell “the most expensive syndication of all time”, according to a banker on the deal.

Rating: Aa1/AA+/AA+

Swedish private equity firm EQT is likely to bring its IPO to market before the end of the year, joining a host of high quality European listings.