Pre-migration untagged articles

Dresdner Bank has issued the first range accrual note in the Italian retail market since the abolition at the end of last week of Banca d'Italia's Article 129, which banned sales of the product. Italy has been one of the biggest markets for structured notes in recent years, but only a limited menu of products has been available.

Emerging market borrowers from the former Soviet Union and Middle East rode the crest of a wave of demand in the bond market for the second week running this week, as deals piled up and order books swelled even faster.

HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt has shrugged off the latest stumble in German mezzanine capital deals, joining Capital Efficiency Group in readying its next transaction.

Italian insurance company Assicurazioni Generali made a stellar return to the bond market this week, bringing a Eu2bn equivalent subordinated debt issue led by HSBC, JP Morgan, Mediobanca and UBS. The deal, equivalent to bank tier one debt, had been one of the most talked about transactions in the European financial institution bond market over the past six months. It turned out a roaring success, attracting Eu14.4bn of orders across the two tranches — a Eu1.25bn perpetual non-call 10 year bond and a £495m perpetual non-call 15 year.

New high grade senior debt and hybrid bond issues this week continued to be multiple times oversubscribed and achieve extraordinarily tight pricing in the US corporate bond market, despite January having set a record for new deal volume.

Anglo Irish Bank, the business-focused bank and wealth management group, raised Eu542.8m of new equity yesterday (Thursday), to fund business expansion.

After last week's frenzied bond issuance from public sector, financial institution and emerging market borrowers, new issuance took a short breather this week, with all eyes focused on key US data.

For the first time for almost two years, car manufacturing was not the most actively traded sector in the North American CDS market last month, according to data released yesterday (Thursday) afternoon by credit derivatives broker GFI.

CDS trading was diminished this week due to the Fed meeting and then the non-farm payroll for January, which will be announced today (Friday). However, there were a couple of single name stories, most of which served to underline the resilience of credit.

The structured note market hosted a variety of large issues across the full spectrum of asset classes this week. Highlights included not just Dresdner Bank's Eu100m range accrual (see page 1) and Italy's Eu500m inflation-linked private placement (see page 46) but a number of chunky rate structures in both euros and dollars, a fund-linked debut, rare Israeli shekels and an innovative sub-Saharan African currency basket.

The success of the long 30 year syndicated government bond by the Hellenic Republic demonstrated strong demand for long dated paper this week, something that had been questioned after the subdued response to the 30 year Bund auction.

Barclays Capital has maintained its lead at the top of private placement league tables, as well as taking over as the leading corporate MTN dealer, after issues totalling $1bn for third party borrowers settled this week.