Nordics

New issue premiums almost seem to be a thing of the past in this week’s dollar market. As one head of SSA DCM put it: “the secondary market is just too cheap for primary”.

L-Bank will go on the road to promote the first ever Reg S dollar benchmark priced over the dollar risk free rate Sofr.

Sparebanken 1 Boligkreditt’s (Spabol) 10 year has the highest covered bond mark of all deals issued by any bank outside the eurozone this year on GC BondMarker. SEB issued the highest scoring Swedish deal and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) issued the best ranking Canadian covered bond this year.

Sweden has joined the throng of SSA borrowers making up for the dollar market's weak start to the year, bringing its first deal in the currency for over a year. It follows a trio of new issues that achieved tight spreads.

Siemens, the German engineering group, and Fortum, the Finnish electricity company, hit the corporate bond market on Tuesday with big, multi-tranche euro deals totalling €5.5bn. Both achieved great terms at long tenors in an otherwise quiet market.

FSN Capital, the Northern European private equity firm, sold its remaining 6.23% stake in Danish IT services firm Netcompany, after market close with no need to offer a discount to investors.

OP Corporate Bank came with tight pricing for its first ever green bond on Tuesday. The Finnish lender took just two and a half hours to complete its trade, over three months after it first spoke with investors about a possible transaction.

The Mortgage Society of Finland has mandated leads for a roadshow with a view to issuing a seven year deal. It follows Volksbank Wien which mandated leads last week and precedes a number of issuers expected to announce mandates after emerging from blackout.

Two Nordic telecoms companies sold euro corporate bonds this week after both spending nearly two years on the sidelines. Both employed no-grow strategies, and Swedish company Telia sold the longest maturity corporate bond deal of 2019 so far.

On Thursday, the European corporate bond market saw its second Nordic telecoms new issue of the week. Finnish company Elisa used the same no-grow strategy as its Swedish peer Telia used on Tuesday, but for a smaller deal.

Svenska Handelsbanken picked banks on Wednesday to arrange the sale of a new additional tier one in the dollar market, with the dust yet to settle around Banco Santander’s decision to extend the life of one of its instruments.

On Tuesday, Swedish telecoms company Telia sold the longest maturity corporate bond deal of 2019 so far. Telia had not been to the market for nearly two years, but has a history of long-dated issuance.