Switzerland

Two emerging market borrowers familiar to investors returned to the Swiss franc market this week, injecting some geographical diversity into the sector.

Switzerland’s Roche has agreed to buy US company Spark Therapeutics for around $4.8bn, with analysts predicting minimal impact on the healthcare multinational’s credit metrics thanks to large forecasted free cash flow.

FFP Holdings, the investment vehicle linked with the Peugeot family, has sold its remaining stake in DKSH, a Swiss company that offers outsourcing services to others looking to expand their businesses, especially in Asia.

Barry Callebaut has taken €600m across three tranches in one of the biggest international Schuldschein transactions in the last 12 months. The Belgian-French chocolate company now based in Switzerland had roadshowed for a public benchmark sustainable bond in November, but opted instead for its first Schuldschein deal, as the risks of execution in the public market were too great.

Investors showed strong support for a new subordinated bond from Zurich Insurance at the beginning of the week, though the firm ended up paying only a small premium for the new issue.

Robert Horat, managing director of the Zurich-based Pfandbriefbank schweizerischer Hypothekarinstitute, says he is mystified as to why the pooling model underpinning Swiss Pfandbriefe has not been used as a blueprint for covered bond markets elsewhere in Europe.

Having accounted for the largest share of international issuance in Swiss francs in 2018, Korean borrowers appear to be acquiring a taste for the market again in 2019. Following last week’s sustainability trade for Korea Western Power, Hyundai Capital returned to the market on Tuesday with its first green bond in the currency.

MET Group, the originally Hungarian, now Swiss-based energy trading, generation and distribution company, has agreed an €885m revolving credit facility. It has more than doubled the amount of bank debt it has available in the past three years.

Korea Western Power (Kowepo) chose an appropriate week to launch the first ever green bond in Swiss francs from an emerging market issuer – and not just because sustainability was high on the agenda at Davos. The deal also came in a week in which representatives from the IFC and the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) met in Bern to discuss the results of a consultation on impact investing among more than 100 members of the Association of Swiss Sustainable Finance (SSF).

Swiss speciality chemicals company Sika attracted more than Sfr6bn of demand on Tuesday evening for a mandatory convertible bond issue to finance its Sfr2.5bn acquisition of Parex, the French building materials company, from CVC Capital Partners.

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Better late than never. After a sluggish start to the year, international activity in the Swiss franc market finally began in mid-week when Westpac priced the first Australian covered bond in Swissies since a Sfr200m National Australia Bank (NAB) trade in January 2014.