UK

After discussions with US private placement holders, French food services company Sodexo has said it will repay roughly $1.6bn of debt early, in the largest ever early repayment of US PPs. It is a result of tensions that have flared up during the pandemic over covenant protections, which some fear will lead to a drop in corporate PP deal flow.

Investors welcomed a 12.5m block sale in Polymetal, the Russian miner of gold and other precious metals, on Tuesday night and poured into the trade following a risk auction.

Royal Vopak, the Dutch oil and gas storage company, is marketing senior and subordinated private placements, according to market sources.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Hikma, a Jordanian company listed in London, hit screens this week, raking in cash and proving appetite for credits along the rating spectrum.

The UK is in many ways a green leader. Starting to issue green Gilts would be peripheral to that, and not necessary to environmental progress. But for a country that desperately needs to buff up its image, it is low-hanging fruit.

Sir Ronald Cohen, one of the UK’s foremost private equity entrepreneurs, believes the Covid-19 crisis is an opportunity to transform western capitalism into a socially responsible enterprise that values a company’s impact on society as much as its profits. Cohen talks to GlobalCapital about the tremendous challenges facing the global economy, and how it can be transformed for the better.

After discussions with US private placement holders, French food services company Sodexo has said it will repay roughly $1.6bn of debt early. Four market sources said this was the largest corporate early repayment of US PPs of all time. Some fear a growing disconnect between institutional investors and companies over financial covenants, and attempts to amend them.

The UK Debt Management Office (DMO) has updated its remit to include an additional £50bn of borrowing by the end of August. However, investors had expected details of the sovereign’s borrowing ambitions up to the end of September.

The UK’s new insolvency law came into force on Friday, and lawyers have been spending the weekend picking through its 250 pages to understand the implications. While some have welcomed it, others pointed out that in its haste to push it through Parliament, the government has introduced several changes that skew the balance between various kinds of lenders which hitherto had been treated equally.

Hannover Re gave away a bit of premium for a new tier two this week, after it touched on the lower bound of the spreads available in the market for insurance capital.

Aston Martin, the UK car maker returned to equity markets on Friday morning to raise yet more equity capital after completing a rights issue in April. The company has sold a stake worth 19.9% of its share capital to allow a new management team to rebuild the company.

A worsening in credit conditions has squeezed some borrowers across EMEA out of syndicated loans and into the bilateral market. As syndicated loans bankers face another year of disappointing figures, market players are split over whether this trend will leave a more permanent dent in volumes. Mariam Meskin and Jon Hay report.