SEB

Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL) ventured into the Swedish and Norwegian markets for the first time this week. With many of Europe's big banks absent from the MTN market this year, dealers are instead chasing more unusual deals from rarer names.

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The Europe Investment Bank extended the euro short term rate (€STR) floating rate note curve on Wednesday with 2021’s first deal in the format.

The decline in international and debut Schuldschein issuance last year had a disproportionate impact on non-German bank arrangers. But this year’s bright start has given them a new lease of life.

France set a new order book record with its new 50 year syndicated bond on Tuesday. Two other public sector borrowers joined the sovereign at the long of the euro curve.

Volvo Cars, the Chinese-owned Swedish auto maker, has refinanced its main bank revolver with a €1.3bn sustainability-linked revolving credit facility, as the borrower looks to become climate neutral by 2040.

Finland’s Municipality Finance has had a busy week in the Norwegian krone market, as demand from domestic bank treasuries for high quality liquid assets (HQLA) drove a pair of floating rate notes in the currency.

Practitioners believe 2021 could be the year when sustainable finance finally breaks out of the narrow confines it has inhabited so far and spreads more widely across the economy.

MTN issuance out of Asia and Sweden provided some of the week’s bright spots in what was otherwise a quiet start to the year. With the public market now in full swing, bankers expect the private placement market to get up to speed in the coming weeks.

Huhtamaki, the Finnish food packaging company, has refinanced a €400m facility, with the borrower becoming the latest to add sustainability metrics to its main bank line as an EU ban on single-use plastics comes into force.

Europe’s investment grade corporate bond market continued its blazing start to the year on a busy Tuesday with trades coming flat to or through secondary curves, and syndicate bankers say the blistering momentum is set to last throughout January.

Shares in Nordnet rose in the aftermarket after the digital bank began trading on Nasdaq Stockholm on Wednesday, following its Skr9bn (€885m) IPO.