Sweden

The City of Gothenburg sold a new dual tranche green bond on Tuesday, raising a combined Skr1.8bn across fixed and floating rate tranches. The note was the first printed under its new updated green bond framework.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress Nordic agencies have made in their 2019 funding programmes by the middle of September.

The €1.2bn IPO of Swedish private equity group EQT was covered throughout its price range, less than two hours into the bookbuilding process on Friday, according to market sources.

Swedish agency Kommuninvest doubled the size of its June 2023 green bond on Tuesday through a Skr3bn ($309.8m) tap. The tap was issued with a negative yield — rare for the Swedish krona market — and is the issuer’s first negative yielding green print since October 2016.

Swedish credit management company Intrum this week completed a €850m issue of new senior notes, pricing at 3% and increasing the size of the offering from the initial €750m. UK-based gambling giant International Game Technology also dipped into the “most issuer-friendly market ever” with €500m bond.

Swedish credit management company Intrum and UK-based gambling giant International Game Technology dipped into the favourable markets again with big €750m and €500m issues .

The Swedish National Debt Office, the Riksgalden, has said that it is assessing whether to issue 100 year bonds as it looks to take advantage of ultra low rates. However, the demand for such products has deteriorated in recent weeks as the seismic rally in government bonds continues to suppress yields, according to public sector debt capital bankers.

Westpac placed just under HK$13.4bn into the Hong Kong market across two MTNs last week — the pair of bonds are its largest ever in the currency, according to Dealogic. The notes came in a busy week for niche issuance, and bankers have posited that this move into the peripheral markets comes as a response to the global fall in yields.

The European IPO market has been reopened with the listings of TeamViewer, the German remote access software provider, and Swedish private equity house EQT. However, with investors continuing to position more defensively bankers expect valuation pressure to remain.

Swedish private equity firm EQT confirmed on Monday that it is seeking to list on the Nasdaq Stockholm, becoming the second issuer to announce it aims to test Europe’s IPO market this autumn.

Issuance is starting to resume after the summer break; however, this week a booming public market drew away investor and issuer attention from MTNs. Despite this, a range of established SSA, FIG and corporate borrowers have slipped in, with deals across core, niche and EM currencies.

After two huge days of corporate bond issuance, Thursday was much quieter, with issues only from Vier Gas Transport and SBB Norden — not because the market was worse, but just because most of the issuers that wanted to come this week had crowded into the first two days.