Sweden

Sweden has set up a Sustainable Finance Centre, as a partnership between the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Stockholm School of Economics. One of the first projects it is considering taking on is helping the International Finance Corp stimulate green bond issuance among emerging market banks.

Swedish speciality chemicals firm Perstorp is lining up the European high yield market’s first December deal, with a €485m two tranche bond that is expected to be priced next week.

Stadshypotek returned to the covered bond market for the third time this year to issue its second seven year at the tightest ever spread to mid-swaps. But the fact leads took so long to decide on the deal size hinted that execution had not gone smoothly.

Subordinated bonds from financial issuers have been back in favour in the Swedish krona market this year, with investors seeking out higher yields compared with other types of credit.

Is demand in Europe’s leveraged finance market so strong that a single-B rated borrower could raise €3.5bn of high yield bonds and loans, and use some of the cash to fund the largest dividend recapitalisation of the year? Verisure began marketing such deal this week, and many investors appear to like it.

There were several large equity block trades on Wednesday night this week, including a rare sale of shares in one of Russia’s biggest steel companies.

Founders of Mr Green, the Nordic online gambling company, picked Carnegie and SEB to sell a block of its shares in an accelerated bookbuild on Wednesday night. The trade was then increased.

In a new sign of how hot Europe's leveraged finance market has become, Verisure, the Swedish security systems company, is seeking to raise €3.5bn of bonds and loans, partly to fund the market's biggest dividend recapitalisation this year.

Swedish property company Akelius Residential Property has sold eight year deals in euros and sterling during the last six months, as well as a four year Swedish krone deal. That concentrated funding activity didn’t affect the success of another euro deal on Tuesday though.

Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) this week issued one of the most oversubscribed French covered bonds in years with demand boosted by the long tenor, small deal size and positive spread. At the same time, SEB found good demand, even though it was issuing the tenth 10 year covered bond since September.

October’s European IPOs are seeing mixed results in trading, with some of the month’s deals slipping after pricing, while others enjoy strong performance.

After several months without any long end dollar benchmark bonds from public sector issuers, two came along at once this week — bolstering confidence that conditions are right for a borrower to print in jumbo size in the tenor for the first time in more than two years.