UniCredit

This week is set to be busy in Europe's investment grade corporate bond market, despite yet another dead day on Monday because of public holidays. Equities rose on Monday and sentiment is good; market participants have decided they are comfortable with what they got from the European Central Bank on Thursday.

Kepler Cheuvreux has become the go-to option for European banks looking to breathe life into failing their equity capital markets businesses. David Rothnie reports.

KfW returned to the market on Wednesday for its second five year euro benchmark of the year. The €5bn 0% July 2024 note was issued with the lowest yield the German agency has ever paid.

Investors proved their appetite for corporate bonds this week by gobbling €5bn of them on a single day, as Publicis Groupe and BMW issued jumbo deals on a second consecutive day of heavy issuance in Europe.

The State of Schleswig-Holstein returned to the market with a 10 year note on Tuesday. Meanwhile, KfW has announced a new five year euro deal, following on from January’s record KfW book for the maturity.

Volkswagen has rebooted the IPO of Traton, its trucks division, after the deal was delayed in March due to volatility in equity markets caused by the ongoing trade tensions between the US and China.

Münchener Hypothekenbank was the only financial institution to issue a euro bond this week, selling a senior non-preferred deal on Wednesday. The German lender attracted demand roughly similar to the bond's size of €250m, set from the start.

Covered bond deals issued on Tuesday by the Swedish Covered Bond Corp (SCBC) and UniCredit Bank Austria were priced tightly but the market proved softer than recent sessions and price sensitivity limited the Swedish bank’s size ambitions.

Spanish infrastructure and renewable energy company Acciona has returned to the Schuldschein market with a €150m-minimum triple tranche transaction. As lenders begin to loosen lines to Italy and Spain, arrangers said there may be more borrowers from those countries to come.

A weakened corporate bond market on Thursday did not dissuade Telenor, the Norwegian telecoms company, from issuing a €2.5bn triple tranche deal. Competing for investors' attention was unrated Symrise, the German flavours and fragrances group, which managed to slash its pricing by 25bp-30bp without losing investors.

Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK) placed a $500m seven year bond on Wednesday inside its own curve and at its tightest ever spread to the Russian sovereign, according to a lead manager on the deal.

Austria’s Prinzhorn Holding has launched a €200m Schuldschein, with the packaging and recycling group bringing the one of the largest deals to hit screens in a spree of deals trying to beat the summer lull