UniCredit

Several companies delayed plans to issue corporate bonds in Europe today, as markets looked ugly at the open. There has been a flurry of MTN and niche currency issuance this week, but the only mainstream corporate bond issue today was from Prologis, the US warehouse Reit.

Profit taking has taken a toll on the periphery this week, but even as Italy’s government bonds continued to take a beating on Wednesday and the market for subordinated FIG debt softened, Italian insurer Poste Vita took to the market with a tier two capital transaction at a level that showed investors are still receptive to new deals.

Carlsberg Breweries returned to the euro bond market after an 18 month gap today with a successful €1bn 10 year bond, though it had to contend with a market that has lost a little of its rude bullishness in the past week.

UniCredit has hired Edouard Lemardeley, one of Crédit Agricole’s French corporate debt capital markets origination bankers.

Swedbank priced the tightest non-German euro seven year benchmark covered bond in over five years on Wednesday and paid virtually no new issue premium.

Bank Austria opened books on Thursday morning for its third covered bond deal of the year, a €500m seven year public sector Pfandbrief. Despite pricing flat to its curve the deal received one of the highest levels of oversubscription for any Austrian deal in the last two years.

French insurance firm Axa is looking to sell a rare perpetual non-call note, taking in a blowout book despite the heft of subordinated financials debt seen this week.

Five FIG issuers took to the subordinated markets to take advantage of months of undersupply this week, with the results highlighting not just the feverish grab for yield but also just how far banks have come since the crisis of 2008 in building their capital levels.

Deoleo, the Spanish olive oil producer, set terms for its €600m-equivalent refinancing loan at a lender meeting on Tuesday.

German construction group Hochtief has extended €2bn of loans by five years through its existing bank syndicate.

UniCredit took a strong step towards meeting its 2014 profit plans in the first quarter, according to results published on Monday. After taking huge losses through goodwill writedowns and loan loss provisions at the end of last year, the group’s profits rebounded, underpinned by decent results from Commercial Bank of Italy, UniCredit CIB and its central eastern Europe division.

Spanish olive oil producer Deoleo will hold bank meetings this week to raise a loan of around €600m to refinance debt.