Pre-migration untagged articles

EuroWeek has learned that Patrick Amat, chairman of the management board of CIF Euromortgage and vice-chief executive of Caisse Centrale du Crédit Immobilier de France, is set to replace Louis Hagen as chairman of the European Covered Bond Council later this year.

It was a busy week in the retail currency bond sector as underwriters established a new foothold in the market.

Mandates announced this week suggest that senior floating rate note supply will dominate the primary market in the coming weeks, with attractive conditions also set to entice further issuers.

HSBC, a bank whose global expansion we have admired for many years, seems to be suffering from a mild attack of inertia.

Dollar swap spreads crumbled this week as Treasuries rallied and the traditional mountain of new year swap driven debt began to pile up.

Last year finished with Citigroup hanging on to its lead, having sold $1.77bn of deals in the second half of December. This issuance kept it ahead of Barclays Capital, which mounted a late charge worth $2.4bn but still finished $1bn behind its rival at the top of the table.

Anglo-Russian oil company TNK-BP's $1bn loan continues to struggle, with bookrunners discussing whether the loan will be relaunched later this month or shelved completely.

In these columns, we have championed the cause of commodities trading, with only a modest amount of success.

The covered bond market was unusually subdued for the first week of January and looks set to remain so for the coming weeks, suggesting that issuers have learnt the lessons of previous years.