Société Générale

Natixis defied the grim tone of the markets in the fourth quarter of 2015 as its capital markets business reported an increase in revenues. The bank argues its results vindicate its progress towards an asset-light model, as the investment solutions business bumped up revenues.

Société Générale’s fourth quarter profits, released on Thursday, were up 19.5% on the year to €686m. But the profit bump could not overcome the market’s thirst for bank blood and its shares plummeted 13% on the open.

B&B Hotels, France’s third largest budget hotels group, closed the book for its €339m seven year term loan ‘B’ at a wide price this week, as the European leveraged loan market works through the last of the deals underwritten in 2015.

On Tuesday night the loan market gathered in all its finery to hear the winners of the 13th Syndicated Loan, Leveraged Finance and Private Placement Awards at the Guildhall, in London. The results are below.

An investor reappraisal of additional tier one paper left the asset class trading at unprecedented lows on Monday, forcing Deutsche Bank to reassure the market of its ability to pay its coupons.

After hiding in the shadows of private placement markets in January, BMW rose above the parapet with a dual tranche public bond on Monday, only to be hit by another sharp global sell-off. Yet the deal still got done, at a good size and with tight new issue premiums.

Hypo Tirol overcame lingering concerns in the aftermath of the Heta Asset Resolution debacle to issue an oversubscribed and relatively well distributed five year Pfandbrief on Thursday.

The extraordinary sight of a German public sector borrower pulling a syndication mid-week led not only led to criticism of the deal’s execution but also reawakened fears over banks' diminishing ability to take down and warehouse sovereign and sub-sovereign bonds. Craig McGlashan reports.

Caixabank issued its largest Cédulas in five years on Monday. It was also the biggest since 2014 and enticed more investors than any Spanish deal in three years.

Concerns over the exodus of real money investors from the covered bond market were put to rest this week as a series of deals met exceptionally strong demand, with the sea change in sentiment being most conspicuous in the French sector.

The wave of Chinese acquisitions of Western companies has reached a new peak, with confirmation that state-owned ChemChina has sealed the deal to buy Syngenta, the Swiss agrichemicals and seeds business, for $43bn, as China seeks to secure its food supply.

As the euro investment grade corporate bond market approached nearly three weeks without a new issue, EasyJet broke the silence on Tuesday with its long-awaited debut bond.