Switzerland

Swiss market infrastructure operator SIX Group will combine digital asset trading, settlement and custody services in a new digital exchange for its customers. The CEO of SIX Group, Jos Dijsselhof, said it was the “beginning of a new era for capital markets infrastructure”.

It is common for a firm to have an association with an adjective. The description is often derogatory, so acquisitive companies are often said to be rapacious. For Glencore, the commonly used adjective is secretive.

Barclays is working hard to expand its equity capital markets business in Northern Europe, in a bid to capitalise on what it expects to be a busy few years for the region.

The spin-off of GrazianoFairfield, the drive systems unit of Swiss engineering firm Oerlikon, was launched on Thursday with the unit valued at Sfr620m at the top of the range.

Swiss gear engineering company Klingelnberg traded softly in the aftermarket on Wednesday, despite a heavily oversubscribed IPO in which a third of the investors in the book received zero allocations.

The Swiss listing of Klingelnberg, the German family-owned gear engineering company, got off to a flying start and was covered across its range within 24 hours of launching the deal.

Medical diagnostics firm Unilabs launched a benchmark size extension of its loan debt on Monday, as a range of investors clamour for paper despite issuance volumes running ahead of last year’s record pace.

Swiss Re, the reinsurance group, returned to the equity-linked debt market on Wednesday with a deal that reinforced this issuer’s reputation for financial innovation: a $500m equity-neutral convertible bond that also acts as a contingent convertible security — except with more flexibility for the issuer.

Swiss telecommunications group Salt Mobile was this week looking to replace most of its debt capital structure with Sfr2.085bn-equivalent (€1.8bn) of new bonds that have weaker covenants, as the high yield market overcomes a recent bout of eurozone volatility.

Swiss speciality chemicals firm Sika turned to the equity-linked market this week to raise Sfr1.65bn. The trade was just what investors in the asset class have been crying out for in Europe, but it also served as a nifty corporate financing solution — funding the settlement of a four year long hostile takeover battle with French rival Saint-Gobain.

Swiss biopharmaceutical company Polyphor has bucked the trend of recent European IPOs by pricing its IPO at Sfr38, in the top half of the initial Sfr30 to Sfr40 range, and increasing the size of the deal.

Polyphor, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, is increasing the size of its IPO by Sfr15m due to “strong demand” from institutional investors.