Nordics

Millicom International Cellular, the emerging markets-focused telecoms group, is planning to issue its first sustainable bond. It published a Sustainability Bond Framework on Tuesday and will issue with a high yield rating.

Walter Ahlström is joining Swedbank as its new head of corporate finance in Finland, as part of its strategy to grow its equity capital markets business and team. He is joining from Carnegie, where he had worked in Finnish ECM. He had been there for nearly four years.

Boutique investment bank Alantra has made new hires across its offices in Europe, Asia and the US.

Swedish krona levels look attractive compared to euros, say bankers, leading to a raft of large deals being printed at the short end. Swedbank and Deutsche Pfandbriefbank both benefited from these levels when they printed covered bonds this week.

Svenska Handelsbanken was well received for a new senior unsecured transaction in the sterling market on Thursday, despite having pushed the spread towards a level that some investors might be able to pick up from a covered bond.

Kingspan, an Irish insulation company, has made a €700m offer for two units of Belgium’s Recticel, but will sell one of them if the deal goes ahead.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress Nordic agencies have made in their 2019 funding programmes.

Issuers and syndicate desks were split over whether the African Development Bank’s inaugural Norwegian krone bond — the first ever social bond in the Norwegian market — could pave the way for further social issuance in the sector.

Finnish local government lender Municipality Finance has announced it is preparing to launch a social bond programme.

Nykredit has published a green bond framework and intends to issue its first green covered bonds, in floating rate Danish kroner and Swedish kronor, in May. The benchmark deals are expected to qualify for the best capital and liquidity treatment.

Adevinta, the online classified advertising division of Schibsted, shone in the aftermarket on Wednesday after the company began trading on the Oslo Børs following its Nkr2.87bn (€298m) IPO.

The IPO of Adevinta, the online classified advertising division of Norwegian media group Schibsted, is oversubscribed throughout the revised price range on the penultimate day of the bookbuilding, according to two sources close to the deal.