UniCredit

Building materials company Knauf has signed a €4bn-equivalent underwritten debt package to go towards its purchase of US peer USG Corp, as lenders continue to reap the rewards of Germany’s booming M&A market.

UniCredit’s CFO Mirko Bianchi has been on the road to meet North American investors after the bank released its third quarter results. From the end of the month, it expects to be prepared to issue its second ever senior non-preferred bond.

Gazprom on Tuesday sold the first public international bond from Russia since a punitive round of US sanctions was put on the country in April.

UniCredit’s German subsidiary, HVB, did well to issue a €750m seven year Pfandbrief on Tuesday, but with Italian headline risk flaring up again, it may have paid slightly over the odds.

Russian giant Gazprom and Ukrainian oil and gas firm Naftogaz, who have been locking horns in court, both chose Tuesday to release price guidance for new Eurobonds. The Gazprom deal will be the first public international bond from a Russian issuer since the US sanctions that shook the market in April. The Naftogaz bond is its first since 2009.

CEZ, a Czech utility company, came to market for four year euros on Tuesday, returning to the currency for its largest deal since 2013.

UniCredit’s German subsidiary, HVB, has announced plans to issue a seven year euro benchmark Pfandbrief, its first covered bond in over a year. At the same time Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (PBB) plans to issue a dollar benchmark three year Pfandbrief.

UniCredit said in its third quarter results on Thursday that it would move to a model in which all of its legal entities were self-funding, gradually minimising its intra-group exposure.

UniCredit has moved its target date for issuing instruments to meet its total loss absorbing capacity (TLAC) requirement from the end of this year to the end of March next year. Meanwhile, chief executive Jean Pierre Mustier is set to invest in the bank’s equity and additional tier one (AT1) notes.

The European Financial Stability Facility finished off its 2018 issuance this week with what was likely the last jumbo euro benchmark of the year. The deal was solid, but SSA bankers warned the euro market feels “tired”.

The State of North Rhine-Westphalia rounded out the week’s euro issuance with an oversubscribed 10 year euro deal that was priced 1bp inside guidance.

Inline warrants are growing in popularity as a means of generating returns when volatility is low.