Sweden

SEB offered investors a negative new issue premium with its preferred senior deal on Monday. With conditions consistently improving for European issuers, this deal has shown that the market is ripe for issuance in the format.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress Nordic agencies have made in their 2020 funding programmes in early May.

Equinor, the petroleum refining company, sold the last of its shares in oil and gas exploration firm Lundin Energy in a Skr3.3bn ($335m) block trade on Tuesday evening.

SBAB Bank found plenty of room to tighten the pricing on a new preferred senior deal in euros on Wednesday, after investors welcomed the trade’s green credentials.

The Danish Financial Services Authority is softening its application of the minimum requirements for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) amid Covid-19, meaning the country’s largest banks could end up issuing half as much senior debt this year as might have been expected.

Swedbank was paying less than fair value for a new euro senior deal on Friday, according to market participants, with the bank raising funding a day after publishing its first quarter results.

A slide in euro and dollar MTN volumes has given Scandinavian banks the chance to propel themselves up the MTN leader board.

SEB is creating a new sustainable finance unit to broaden its offering across the whole bank, and is building a team including country heads — the first of which is Lars Eibeholm, who will join the bank from the Nordic Investment Bank in the summer.

Bluestep Bank has issued its first covered bond and the first Swedish transaction secured on mortgages that are not prime. The deal offered a juicy pick-up to prime benchmarks, but still provided a competitive and diversified source of funding.

Svenska Handelsbanken and Swedbank looked to be as transparent as possible when laying out their assumptions for loan losses this week, as part of an effort to reassure the market about their resilience in the face of the coronavirus crisis.

A measured reopening of the primary bond markets in the last month has left banks in a good place to launch new deals after first quarter results, according to FIG DCM officials.

Swedish biotech company Getinge raised Skr1bn ($100m) of commercial paper off a new Covid-19 Financing Framework on Friday to it help meet increased demand for ventilators as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.