Spain

A debut sovereign green bond from Ireland and benchmark from a Spanish agency provided the firmest proof yet that the fiscal stink over Italy’s planned budget deficit has not put investors off other SSAs in the eurozone — even those that until recently were in the same ‘periphery’ bucket as Italy. But bankers are concerned that Italy’s standoff with the European Union has further to run — and that a BTP spread over Bunds of 400bp will be the breaking point.

Spain's Fondo de Amortización del Déficit Eléctrico (FADE) will look to the private market to complete its 2018 funding programme, following the sale of its second and final syndication of the year.

Fondo de Amortización del Déficit Eléctrico braved volatility in the eurozone periphery bond market on Wednesday for its second benchmark of the year.

A new Spanish real estate fund, Arima Real Estate, is seeking to list on the Spanish stock exchange in a fixed price listing worth up to €300m.

Spain’s Soltec has signed a €100m loan from local banks, as the photovoltaic tracking equipment company furthers its global expansion.

Italy’s latest political drama is making investors nervous, and rightly so — when the leader of a country’s main governing party accuses European leaders of market ‘terrorism’, in the vein of an ‘EU equals the USSR’ conspiracy theorist, then you’d be right to dump its bonds. But the steadiness of Spanish and Portuguese govvies through all this shows not only that the term ‘eurozone periphery’ may have to be consigned to the historical dustbin, but that the firewalls erected by those same European leaders after the last sovereign debt crisis are standing firm.

Cepsa, the Spanish multinational oil and gas firm, will be worth up to €8.08bn when it lists on the Spanish Stock Exchanges later this month, according to terms released on Tuesday.

Abengoa, the Spanish renewable energy group, is seeking to convince its investors to engage in yet another rescue plan, which includes debt swaps with no cash coupons and new convertible bonds.

Société Générale and Abanca both offered investors additional tier one notes this week. For the French bank, it was the second deal of the week.

Santander Consumer Finance did not have to pay too much concession to take senior funding from the market on Tuesday, following on from Société Générale and Royal Bank of Scotland the day before.

Rating: A3/A-/A-

The Spanish market securities regulator overhauled some of its listing procedures at the end of 2017 in an effort to make the country a more attractive place for debt issuance. Its actions are already starting to bear fruit, as Spanish banks and companies show a much greater appetite for registering their bonds on home turf.