Pre-migration untagged articles

Why was everyone in the Bad Ragaz medical clinic and the Grand Hotel looking so happy last week?

The bond market was reacting this week to Iceland's financial crisis, as the Icelandic króna experienced its biggest 24 hour dip in nearly five years — 4.5% — on Tuesday. On January 24, the króna was at Ikr61.15 against the dollar. Yesterday (Thursday), it was at Ikr67.34. The slide was caused by Fitch's revision of its outlook on Iceland's long term ratings to negative, which highlighted concerns over the country's current account deficit. Amid a sell-off of Icelandic assets, the effect was felt among emerging market currencies, such as the Turkish lira and Mexican peso, although these soon rallied.

Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking has won the bid for food giant Heinz's European seafood business. Lehman's private equity arm is paying Eu425m for the company. Rabobank has been mandated to arrange and underwrite a Eu315m senior and mezzanine debt to provide acquisition and on-going working capital finance.

Washington Mutual is hoping to raise as much as $2bn today (Friday) when it launches a new hybrid capital structure.

Washington Mutual is hoping to raise as much as $2bn today (Friday) when it launches a new hybrid capital structure.

Egypt's Weather Investments this week completed the largest and most highly structured equity-linked deal of the year so far in the EMEA region — a Eu825m exchangeable bond to refinance its acquisition of Italian mobile telecoms operator Wind Telecomunicazioni.

Sainsbury's, the UK supermarket chain, is to buy back all its outstanding bonds, totalling £1.7bn, through a tender process managed by Morgan Stanley and UBS, EuroWeek has learned. They will be replaced by up to £2.07bn of highly rated commercial mortgage backed securities, secured on 127 of its supermarkets, which are worth £3.55bn.

Banco Popular Espanol signed a Eu4bn EuroCP programme yesterday (Thursday), making it the second Spanish bank to enter the EuroCP market. The progamme is arranged by Lehman Brothers, which is joined by Bank of America, Banco Popular Espanol, Barclays Capital, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and UBS on the dealer panel.

A vast array of Spanish issuers hit the tier two market as foreshadowed by EuroWeek last week. More is on the way as Banco Guipuzcoano, a small Basque savings bank, gets ready to hit the road next week. The issuer has announced the mandate for what will be its inaugural transaction in the market.

There was a flurry of activity in the tables this week. In league table one both Lehman Brothers and WestLB moved up two notches, to take eighth and 16th positions, respectively. Lehman's deals included a TL50m one year note for the International Bank for Reconstruction & Development (World Bank) at 12%.

</