UBS

UBS is losing its Asia head of corporate client solutions, who is understood to have resigned on Thursday, according to sources.

Equity-linked issuance in Europe burst into life on Thursday with the sale of a €500m bond for Prysmian Cables & Systems and the first Japanese CB of any size since September. Then on Thursday evening Immofinanz launched another deal. The clutch of deals suggests the market is wide open for issuers.

ASB Finance and Met Life entered the Swiss market this week despite them having little need for the Swiss currency in their funding programmes.

Ten year Pfandbrief €500m deals issued this week by NordLB and Bawag were narrowly oversubscribed even with the support of the Eurosystem.

Auckland Council on Thursday pulled off a 7bp tightening for its first ever public deal in euros. The trade was joined in the market by paper from the City of Hamburg and Bpifrance Financement.

As many as eight covered bonds were launched across three currencies this week, the vaguely discernible pattern suggesting better interest for the larger deals with intermediate maturities and particularly those from non-eurozone issuers where liquidity is most likely to be better.

Corporates from Hong Kong, China and Singapore were clamouring for investors’ attention on Thursday for their respective offerings.

Agence Française de Développement made its 2017 debut with a €1.5bn five year on Wednesday, but longer dated euro deals seem to be struggling as European Investment Bank found with a April 2032 tap.

The treasury team at BASF, the German chemicals producer, kept up a high level of capital markets activity on Tuesday as it targeted a debut transaction in the Eurodollar market.

Primary activity in the European leveraged loans market is off to a stuttering start this year, with only a few small deals launched and larger borrowers either yet to appear or set to forego the market.

Morgan Stanley and UBS are looking to bump up their stakes in their respective securities joint ventures in China to the maximum 49%, said sources from both banks.

Covered bond issuers from Europe’s core accessed the market across a range of intermediate tenors this week with LBBW, Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) and Helaba issuing some of their largest deals in years.