Société Générale

Insurance capital is finding unexpected favour even as most other European debt markets are stopped in their tracks. With insurers rushing to take in fresh subordinated debt ahead of new EU regulations next month, and investors increasingly receptive to higher yielding instruments from a less volatile sector than banks, more than €2.3bn ($2.85bn) of deals emerged this week. And as Nathan Collins and Graham Bippart report, more could emerge in the coming days.

Dubai Aluminium (Dubal) has set pricing terms and drawn as many as 20 banks for a $1.8bn seven year loan.

Publicis, the French PR and advertising firm, issued €1.2bn of bonds on Tuesday, equally split between seven and 10 year tranches. The proceeds will be used to fund its acquisition of US marketing and consultancy company Sapient.

An attractive pick-up over the parent company and a strong bid for insurance paper bode well for a subordinated deal from Société Générale's insurance subsidiary Sogecap on Tuesday, according to bankers away from the deal. A successful print from Sogecap will be encouraging for issuers like La Mondiale and Intesa Sanpaolo Vita, which are both expected to sell sub debt of their own in the near future.

Moody’s has downgraded the corporate rating of Spie, the French engineering and communications services firm, from B1 to B2 in response to a €2bn refinancing exercise.

Spie, the French engineering and communications firm, gave price guidance for its €911m loan at a London bank meeting on Monday.

The recently quiet subordinated market — excepting Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's thunderous additional tier one (see Asia section) — saw a bit of action this week as UK challenger bank Aldermore privately placed a small additional tier one deal and Société Générale’s insurance subsidiary announced a roadshow for a perpetual bond.

Grupo Actividades de Construcción y Servicios (ACS) of Spain is in talks with a group of banks to refinance €2.2bn of debt, and plans to complete the deal in January 2015.

Imerys, the French industrial minerals supplier, tapped its 2.5% November 2020 bond for €100m ($124.34) and issued a new €500m 10 year on Wednesday.

Whether or not the European Central Bank announces a programme of sovereign quantitative easing at its next meeting on Thursday or — as many analysts predict — in the first quarter of next year, eurozone countries are already taking advantage of the plummeting borrowing costs generated by the expectation of central bank action.

Société Générale's insurance subsidiary Sogecap is looking to sell a euro denominated perpetual subordinated bond in the near future.

After many days in which bankers have wondered why more sellers were not bringing block trades to what are very strong equities markets, today a burst of deals hit the screens.