SEB

Three issuers launched covered bond benchmarks in euros this week, down from nine in the previous week, as borrowers anticipated an improvement in market conditions and lower new issue concessions.

Nordic companies are showing a strong willingness to adopt the renminbi for payments which is a creating an opportunity for Sweden’s SEB Paula da Silva, head of transaction services at SEB, told GlobalRMB at the recent Sibos conference held in Singapore.

Skandiabanken, the Norwegian online bank, narrowed the price range of its initial public offering on Tuesday, having achieved investor coverage at that level.

Guarantor: Federal Republic of Germany

Finland’s Municipality Finance has edged nearer to its funding goal for the year with a pair of Norwegian krone bonds, its first prints in the currency since early 2014.

Bravida, the Swedish electrical, heating, plumbing and ventilation systems installer, closed the institutional book for its IPO at noon on Thursday, and was doing allocations on Thursday afternoon. Pricing is expected to come on Friday morning.

Finnish telecommunications company DNA has refinanced loan facilities with a €250m credit facility, signed today.

Bravida is set to obtain a SEK4bn (€430m) five year unsecured term loan facility in connection with its planned initial public offering this month.

Just south of the city of Växjö in southern Sweden is a new residential neighbourhood called Solallén. It’s a cluster of 21 black and yellow townhouses that, aesthetically pleasing as they are with their high ceilings and bike parking and gardens, would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that they constitute the first net zero energy residential neighbourhood in Sweden.

As the green bond market grows and becomes more sophisticated, so do the demands from investors for better verification and reporting standards. But with a proliferation of approaches and third party opinion providers, there are calls for standardisation — and even the potential for pricing differentials developing among bonds with different qualities of reporting. Craig McGlashan reports.

GlobalCapital's European SRI roundtable for 2015 brought together issuers, investors and bankers to discuss how to tackle the capital markets challenges of sustainable and responsible investment.

Responsible investing sounds clear enough, but there is a bewildering range of approaches. You can build up green portfolios or search for value across all your assets. Yet there is no doubt: responsible investing is on the march. Jon Hay reports.