Sweden

Swedbank bucked a trend of issuers turning to covered bonds for funding on Thursday when it launched a five year fixed rate senior deal.

Scandic Hotels, the Nordic hotel operator that started taking orders for its IPO on November 17, has released a covered message to investors, a lead banker said on Wednesday.

Dometic, the Swedish maker of refrigerators and cookers for camper vans, traded up 15.42% on its first day as a public company on Wednesday, a strong aftermarket performance that recalled other Scandinavian IPOs this year.

The Swedish central bank published its second stability report of the year and continues to be concerned over high indebtedness and high house prices, factors which are intrinsically connected to the growth of Sweden’s covered bond market. The report follows recent proposals to tighten repo rules affecting covered bonds, proposals which the Swedish FSA and debt office have said are beyond the remit of the independent central bank.

SKF, the Swedish ball bearing maker, won a €2.2bn order book today (Tuesday) for a €500m no-grow bond, issued to partly fund a tender offer for older notes.

Alandsbanken, the Finnish banking group, has issued its first Swedish krona bond for over a year, drawing huge demand from domestic Swedish investors.

A trio of issuers from Finland and Sweden raised €3.5bn of funding in the covered bond market this week with strong receptions and limited spread concessions.

Kommuninvest will receive a capital injection from its owners to help meet upcoming leverage ratio rules, but has not ruled out issuing additional tier one paper to raise further capital.

Stadshypotek, the mortgage subsidiary of Svenska Handelsbanken, returned to the market with its first euro denominated covered bond since November 2014. The issuer increased the transaction size and tightened the spread, sending strong signal of confidence to other borrowers considering launching deals before the end of the year.

SEB mandated leads and opened books for the fourth sterling denominated covered bond from a Swedish issuer this year, a three year floating rate note. At the same time, Korea Housing Finance Corp (KHFC) opened books for a fixed rate five year dollar benchmark, and its first legally enshrined covered bond.

A government minister in one of Europe’s major economies has told GlobalCapital that green bonds could be a “complement” to the country’s existing climate change mitigation policies.

Mölnlycke, the Swedish maker of wound dressings and surgical gloves, issued a €500m eight year bond on Monday, as the corporate bond market’s awakening from earnings blackouts continued apace.