Pre-migration untagged articles

Sweden’s state-owned forestry company Sveaskog sold a pair of MTNs to domestic investors this week as the company gears up with a large upcoming dividend to pay.

The sovereign, supranational and agency bond market this week has left market haruspices with few entrails to deliberate over but what portents there are hint at a rocky future.

European banks have been busy wrapping up secured financing deals this week, as the unsecured markets slip into holiday mode ahead of the Easter break. As well as a clutch of ABS transactions, rare covered bond issuer Axa Bank Europe printed a €1bn trade in an unusual format. But the deals came at the expense of the unsecured markets, with public and private deals slowing down.

Though the public holidays are looming this week in the US and Europe, emerging market issuers show few signs of easing up.

Those European corporate bond specialists not already on the ski slopes can put their feet up on their desks for the rest of this week. The minutes of the US Federal Reserve’s March meeting, showing a strong vote against further quantitative easing, knocked US stock markets on Tuesday and kicked Treasuries where it hurts. The 10 year yield leapt 14bp to 2.30%, though it has since moderated about 4bp.

Sovereign, supranational and agency issuers are happy to leave rampant mainstream markets be, it would appear. They may be advanced in their funding by and large and confident of returning to tighter spreads but if they are going to leave off the benchmark deals, they should employ the time to explore alternative markets.

Millennium BCP’s tender of three covered bonds saw the highest amount bought back of any covered bond operation seen so far this year. This may hint that some holders view the potential upside from current levels as being quite limited. Alternatively, it could be because of the high premium offered and the fact the bonds are on the verge of being downgraded to junk.

The Kingdom of Belgium continued its successful run of syndications with a €4bn seven year OLO priced on Wednesday, taking advantage of a strong market backdrop ahead of Easter and a lack of competing supply.

A number of safe haven SSA borrowers this week opted for low cost funding with short dated deals away from benchmark issuance. KfW, as has become its custom, provided the most spectacular example by serving up a record-breakingly tight two year euro deal as investors were subjected to something of a yield squeeze.

The German Association of Pfandbriefbanks (VDP) is set to propose amendments to the Pfandbrief Act that should be in place by the start of 2013. The initiative mostly relates to two areas — transparency and the role of the cover pool administrator.

Starving investors piled into trades from Crédit Agricole and HSH Nordbank on Thursday, taking full advantage of the first euro benchmarks to hit the market since the previous week. Though neither issuer kept books open for more than an hour, the hunger for euro paper and the paucity of supply resulted in 250 accounts placing €5.5b in orders across the two trades.

The International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM) and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) have launched a profit rate swap product standard for Islamic hedging.