Pre-migration untagged articles

Swisscom provided the Swiss franc market with some rare corporate supply on Monday when it raised Sfr750m from two and 12 year deals. Both tranches attracted heavy demand — the Sfr250m two year note garnered an order book double that size. But the deal could be the last Swiss corporate bond until September, bankers say. The FIG market though has hosted ANZ National International and other banks are tipped to follow. Read more on Friday.

A group of six banks has launched a taskforce to examine the funding options for corporate borrowers in the UK, and how financing to the sector can be increased. The group, led by HSBC chairman Stephen Green, hopes to report on the securitisation markets, business aid schemes and financing to small and medium sized enterprises later in the year. But what can realistically be accomplished? Read EuroWeek on Friday.

Issuers are growing in confidence, said European commercial paper dealers this week, and are becoming ever choosier about prices and maturities as the panic to find funding dies down.

Jefferies placed its first EuroMTN this week, a $300m seven year fixed rate trade for KfW, marking the beginning of the US bank’s push into the European private placement market.

A version of the US Covered Bond Act of 2010 passed by the House Financial Services Committee last month will help investors, according to Moody’s, but does not adequately deal with market value risk and could lead to different standards for different types of issuers.

Dealers of private EMTNS: Non-syndicated deals for less than $250m excluding financial repackaged SPVs, GSE issuers, self-led deals and issues with a term of less than 365 days.

Callable zero demand shows no signs of abating with 19 callable zeros being placed in the MTN market by Thursday this week — a much higher number than any week in recent times. Dollar callable zero coupon notes are typically sold to Taiwanese investors.

Public sector-backed covered bonds issued by Kommunalkredit Austria and Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank have been cut by Moody’s following downgrades of their issuer ratings, while Fitch took negative rating actions on Spanish and Greek covered bonds this week.

Graham Pointer has quit Royal Bank of Scotland and EuroWeek understands he will join Citi’s sovereign supranational and agency coverage team, reporting to Philip Brown.

A reinvention of UK corporate finance, including small cap securitisations, a Post Office Bank and regional stock exchanges, is on the cards after the UK Treasury and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills laid out plans this week to increase funding of British businesses — especially small and mid cap companies.

The House Financial Services Committee passed the United States Covered Bond Act of 2010 on Wednesday after some concessions were made to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. However, a compromise over the contentious issue of how overcollateralisation should be treated has not yet been reached.

Moody’s downgraded covered bonds of four Portuguese banks on Wednesday because of the negative impact on its expected loss analysis of earlier downgrades of the issuers.