Santander

Santander and BNP Paribas printed their first dollar trades of 2014 as demand for investment grade paper continued its strong run.

CNH Industrial has sold its first bond since the merger of Fiat Industrial and CNH Global, raising €1bn and attracting a €3.5bn book from over 280 accounts before reconciliation.

The high yield bond flurry by Spanish issuers carried on this week, with strong issues from two debut borrowers. Solid demand allowed Grupo Isolux Corsan to increase its bond by €200m, while Grupo Antolin-Irausa accelerated its deal by a day.

Grupo Antolin-Irausa, the Spanish car parts maker, has picked a quieter week for its debut high yield issue after last week’s deal flurry. The family-owned company wants to sell €400m of senior secured bonds alongside a new credit facility.

Any doubt over the enthusiasm for senior euro denominated bank debt on Monday, when a short selloff was followed by three successful pricings, was entirely dispelled by Tuesday morning, with three more senior deals hitting the market and meeting big demand off the bat.

British American Tobacco raised €1bn in the bond market on Monday, completing a hat-trick of deals by the three leading European cigarette makers. The transaction’s heavy oversubscription suggested there had been no impact either from the clustering of tobacco issuance, or from Russia’s alarming intervention in Ukraine.

Leading investors are starting to chafe at the pricing of deeply subordinated bank capital, even as a vast €45bn wave of orders carried this week’s trio of euro and sterling new issues from Banco Santander, Danske Bank and Nationwide Building Society to record low coupons, write Graham Bippart and Tom Porter.

Investors have put in nearly €45bn of orders across three new additional tier one deals, in a week that has seen numerous records in the asset class broken. The activity was variously described by bankers as a “bonanza” with “no end in sight” for demand, causing both excitement and a tinge of bewilderment among market pros.

British American Tobacco raised €1bn in the bond market today, completing a hat-trick of deals by the three leading European cigarette makers. The transaction’s heavy oversubscription suggested there had been no impact either from the clustering of tobacco issuance, or from Russia’s alarming intervention in Ukraine.

Nationwide Building Society has thrown its hat into the ring for selling additional tier one debt, mandating lead arrangers to gauge interest in what would be the first such deal to be denominated in sterling and the first AT1 paper to be sold by a non-bank institution.

Gas Natural Fenosa, the Spanish gas and electricity company, issued on Thursday the first Spanish corporate bond of the year, and was swamped with a €5bn order book for the €500m no-grow issue.

BP continued a busy month of bond issuance on Tuesday with a €2bn issue, which echoed in scale the €2.5bn dual trancher it sold in February 2012.