Pre-migration untagged articles

Municipality Finance opened the Finnish inflation-linked market yesterday (Thursday) when it sold Eu50m of 10 year 1.6% real coupon paper via Nordea. The deal was structured to match the July 2015 OATi, pricing in the mid-teens over the French issue.

The US electorate delivered a shock to President George Bush this week, but the bond market barely looked up to notice. More than $20bn of high grade bonds poured into the market and were swamped with demand, as issuers and investors alike took advantage of what many bankers are calling the best market conditions in recent memory.

United Utilities has increased the size of its MTN programme, to ensure that it can take any opportunity in the buoyant market for UK inflation-linked bonds.

The results from Deutsche Bank — and yes, we did see the insurance settlement and the Linde share gain — were really quite good, but UBS had already upset the apple cart for all bank stocks, and the whole sector has been sent back for a brief spell in the doghouse.

Extendible MTNs which give investors the option to lengthen the maturity of a product have become a common feature of the US debt capital markets. However, these deals have not enjoyed similar popularity in Europe. Henry Williams investigates why Moody's new rating approach could give them a fresh prominence.

Lloyds TSB has hired Farouk Ramzan from Société Générale as head of debt capital markets, as the UK commercial bank makes a push into investment banking.

Expectations that Resolution, the specialist manager to UK life funds, would come to the market with a tier two transaction before the end of 2006 were quashed this week.

The Swedish Covered Bond Corp has launched its second euro denominated covered bond only two weeks after its debut, taking advantage of attractive funding and strong demand in the two year maturity.

SCIP 2, the Italian Treasury's securitisation of residential and commercial property, fell prey to renewed volatility in the secondary market this week after Fitch Ratings placed the deal's outstanding notes on Rating Watch Negative.

Craig Schiffer, chief executive of the Americas at Dresdner Kleinwort, left the bank on Tuesday over strategic differences.