UniCredit

Chemical and consumer goods firm Henkel has signed a €1.5bn sustainability-linked revolving credit facility, with leads claiming the deal is the first of its kind in Germany.

European borrowers that flit between public and private debt have been choosing the Schuldschein market because of its comparatively tight pricing in the last few months but this week Freenet, the German telcoms firm, sweetened the terms it was offering investors.

The first green bond from a Slovenian borrower came to market this week. SID Bank will use the proceeds for green mortgages and financing low carbon aircraft.

Austrian oil and gas company OMV sold its first senior corporate bonds of 2018 on Monday after it attracted €3.9bn of demand for a pair of €500m notes with five year and 10 year tenors.

Borealis, the Austrian petrochemicals maker, sold its largest corporate bond tranche on Wednesday. The deal came two days after Austrian oil and gas company OMV, which owns more than a third of Borealis, had issued its own dual tranche deal.

UniCredit found a single investor willing to buy $3bn of its non-preferred senior notes at a coupon rate of 7.83% this week, as the bank pulled out all the stops in an effort to comply with its interim target for total loss-absorbing capacity (TLAC).

The Bank of Italy has said that it is concerned that the introduction of a new minimum requirement for own funds and eligible liabilities (MREL) could prove troublesome for the business operations of Italian banks, given their limited access to international bond markets.

UniCredit will likely become the first commercial bank to finish a year in the top two arrangers in the Schuldschein market. As the market internationalises, many believe commercial banks are well placed to challenge the Landesbanks’ grip on deal flow.

Gunvor, the Swiss energy and commodities trading company, has signed a $1.68bn revolving credit facility, having increased it during syndication as lenders piled into the transaction.

Nemera, the French maker of drug delivery devices, and UK school operator Cognita are funding their new ownerships in a euro leveraged loan market dominated by acquisition deals.

Rating: Baa3 (positive)/BBB-/BBB- (positive)

French toll road operator APRR had been quiet in 2018 by its own standards, but it sold its first corporate bond deal of the year on Wednesday with a €500m long 11 year trade. It paid a low new issue premium for the deal, but lost a number of orders along the way.