UBS

Block trade activity built steadily in intensity this week, reaching a crescendo on Thursday evening with a burst of deals including Airbus’s exit from Dassault Aviation. Also out on Thursday were Apax’s clean-up of Auto Trader shares and a block of shares in Spanish property company Colonial. Deutsche Bank was on almost every deal.

Shares in Van Lanschot, the Dutch wealth management firm, jumped 5% on Thursday after it announced the pricing of its ‘re-IPO’ early in the morning.

NordLB’s Luxembourg subsidiary issued its longest maturity covered bond on Tuesday and paid a paltry premium, but the double digit pick-up failed to draw much excess demand.

A resurrection of what should have been last year’s biggest deals from Veritas and a euro deal from Altice point to a leveraged loan market that has returned to good health, writes Max Bower.

Westpac New Zealand’s €750m five year this week attracted the largest order book and was priced at the tightest ever spread for a New Zealand covered bond. Bank of New Zealand is set to follow.

Shares in Erste Bank and Euskaltel closed nearly 4% lower on Wednesday after two block trades were executed in their shares on Tuesday evening.

The June crop of IPOs should all be brought home by the end of this week, leaving the market bare for the dangerous mid-June weeks when the UK will be holding its referendum on leaving the EU.

Of the five IPOs due to reach completion this week, Norway’s B2 Holding finished its bookbuild today and Dong Energy has put out final guidance. Van Lanschot has also just revised its guidance. The other two — ASR Nederland and Basic-Fit — have still to refine their original price ranges.

Chinese conglomerate, Citic, raised $1.25bn from dual-tranche dollar notes, which were its first outing to the dollar bond market since changes to its structure nearly two years ago. The markets were still jittery but the issuer was able to live up to its name value by effortlessly raising the target amount and saving costs.

An executive director who quit the loans syndicate and distribution team of Standard Chartered in April, has joined UBS.

Koninklijke BAM Groep, the Dutch construction company, raised €125m on Monday with a rare subordinated convertible bond issue, which becomes its only traded debt instrument.

Dong Energy has narrowed the price range for its IPO, cutting off the bottom end of the range, after a banker on it said: “it’s about as strong an IPO as we’ve seen in a long time”.