Norway

DNB Boligkreditt took advantage of strong market conditions to mandate leads for its second covered bond of the year on Tuesday.

Equity investors showed they were stepping up in numbers to invest in primary growth capital raises across Europe after Elkem, the Norwegian silicone manufacturer, raised $228m-equivalent and Greek bank Piraeus completed a €1.38bn raise to help clean up its non-performing loan book.

Three banks jumped into the euro senior market after the Easter break on Tuesday, benefitting from stable demand and printing with low new issue concessions.

Out of the ashes of Norwegian Air Shuttle has risen a new low-cost Norwegian transatlantic carrier, Norse Atlantic. The airline is seeking to raise Nkr1.27bn ($149m) to pick up the transatlantic routes that its beleaguered predecessor has abandoned.

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

SR Boligkreditt issued its largest and longest covered bond on Wednesday, at the tightest spread it has achieved in more than three years, slightly inside fair value.

Hypo Tirol Bank has mandated leads to roadshow its first social covered bond and SR Boligkreditt has mandated leads for a vanilla deal. Both issuers plan on following printing 10 year deals, where yields are almost positive.

Financial institutions have ramped up their sales of green debt at the start of 2021, as they look to take advantage of a quiet funding year by building out their environment, social and governance frameworks. This week, nearly all FIG euro issuance arrived in ESG formats.

The depth of demand for financial institutional funding in the domestic Scandinavian currency markets was illustrated this week with a series of covered bonds and subordinated new issues.

Golden Ocean Group, the Burmuda-registered oil and dry bulk shipping company, has completed a Nkr2.87bn ($338.5m) capital raising backed by Norwegian billionaire John Fredriksen.

The size of a covered bond liquidity buffer that protects investors against the risk of payment disruption should be an important risk consideration, but there is no incentive to play safe as regulatory and central bank treatment of the asset class play more pivotal roles in valuations.

Sparebanken Sør Boligkreditt’s covered bond drew more demand than competing deals issued by Berlin Hyp and Royal Bank of Canada on Tuesday, thanks to its more generous spread, shorter duration and favourable liquidity treatment.