Pre-migration untagged articles

KfW stepped up its commercial paper activity this week printing over $800m equivalent since February 4.

Hot off the press: Tobago has the early lead in the "Best places to spend your gardening leave in 2011" poll.

Dealers of private EMTNs: Non-syndicated deals for less than $250m excluding financial repackaged SPVs, self-led deals and issues with a term of less than 365 days

Banks took up Eu218bn of funds against the Eu284bn maturing in the ECB’s weekly and one month refinancing operations on Tuesday, draining the system of Eu66bn of excess central bank liquidity.

Portugal might as well make it official and take the bail-out. This week’s five year deal looked to be a twice covered Eu3.5bn triumph on Monday. But on Thursday primary investors were selling, forcing it 30bp wider against swaps, and the ECB was wading in to buy other Portuguese bonds.

Europe’s politicians have the opportunity to steer European bond markets back on to the straight and narrow today when they meet to decide the future of the European Financial Stability Facility and whether to increase its lending and ability to buy bonds.

Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO) built on its recent capital markets successes with a series of MTNs this week.

Imperial Tobacco returned to the commercial paper market after a hiatus of almost 10 years.

Lloyds Banking Group underlined the strength of UK insurers’ bid for covered paper with an 18 year £1.25bn bond issue this week. The deal follows Nationwide Building Society’s 15 year sterling deal a fortnight ago, which was the first test of these investors’ appetites. The strength of domestic interest could drive strong performance by UK banks in the covered bond market, said bankers.

Dealers of private EMTNs: Non-syndicated deals for less than $250m excluding financial repackaged SPVsm self-led deals and issues with a term of less than 365 days