UniCredit

Europe gains traction on domestic demand: we like risky assets and see limited euro downside

Wind turbine company Nordex signed €1.4bn in loans on Tuesday. The five bookrunners flexed to accommodate a planned acquisition, in what was intended to be a plain refinancing.

Italian oil drilling company Saipem has revealed its bank group following the company's debut loan syndication.

Italian oil refinery company Saras signed a €265m loan on December 10, cutting its margin on the refinanced facility by about 150bp.

UniCredit has appointed a new head of funding as part of an internal reorganisation.

Russian steel company Evraz raised $750m from a bond that was printed tight to secondary levels on Thursday as it benefited from huge pent up demand for Russian corporate paper, even in a volatile market for metals and mining firms.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, for a number of years subdued activity in IPOs was believed to be the norm on Italian exchanges. Yet since 2014, political and economic trends are changing the script — prompting a boom in Italian IPO activity, according to Stefania Godoli, global head of equity capital markets at UniCredit.

Intesa Sanpaolo issued a €1.25bn 10 year covered bond on Wednesday, a transaction that did not initially seem to be an obvious trade, but which in the end proved very successful.

UniCredit’s German subsidiary HypoVereinsbank (HVB) priced a well oversubscribed four year mortgage covered bond this week in the wake of CIBC's strong reception in the three year tenor.

The covered bond market experienced a surge in supply this week, confounding expectations, and illustrating how important it is for issuers to seize unusual funding opportunities.

Russian steel company Evraz has set the yield on a long five year benchmark at 8.25% area, a level that bankers away from the deal said was roughly in line with where he calculated fair value for the bond.

UniCredit has made a string of internal appointments to its Asia and Americas management teams.