UniCredit

UniCredit Bank AG (HVB) and Hypo Vorarlberg Bank AG are expected to open books on Tuesday for Pfandbriefe in the 15 and eight year tenors. The longer deal follows a series of other long-end trades and may be followed by more, as borrowers take advantage of remarkably strong market conditions to do their most difficult deals.

European corporate bond investors showed they were hungry for paper on Thursday, despite the gloom infecting equity markets this week about the prospect of a restart to the China-US trade war. A flurry of issuers came to the market, hot from roadshows, and got plenty of over-subscription while slashing their spreads by 20bp to 30bp.

UniCredit provided details of its intention to strengthen its balance sheet further on Thursday, as it produced a well-received set of earnings results.

France’s Lagardère has launched a Schuldschein deal, with the media company likely the only new name on screens before an expected deluge of trades from next week onwards.

UniCredit’s chief executive, Jean Pierre Mustier, moved fast this week to sell €1bn of stock in FinecoBank, the Italian bank’s online brokerage, after a decision to deconsolidate the unit. Many in the market see UniCredit's accelerating asset sales as an effort to boost its capital position before exploring M&A opportunities in 2020. Aidan Gregory reports.

NRW.Bank mandated banks on Wednesday for a 10 year euro bond, in what is the agency’s first benchmark since rules were changed to allow the bank to be dissolved by law only.

UniCredit surprised investors with its speed when it sold a €1bn block in FinecoBank on Tuesday — the same day it announced that it would seek to reduce its stake in the online brokerage.

The formal separation of FinecoBank, the Italian online brokerage, from UniCredit has begun with Italy’s biggest bank selling almost half stake to institutional investors via an equity block trade – a strategy UniCredit has used numerous times in the past to shed non-core assets under its CEO Jean-Pierre Mustier.

The City of Hanover is returning to the Schuldschein market with a dual tranche, long dated deal, around a year after it became the first city to issue a green Schuldschein.

FinecoBank may look to boost its leverage ratio with a €200m issuance of additional tier one securities in the coming months, as part of plans for the entity to operate independently from the UniCredit group.

Allegro, the Polish e-commerce platform, is raising Z2bn (€470m) in a dividend recapitalisation, according to bankers. The deal, one of the biggest CEE loans in this year’s pipeline, is being led by three local and international lenders, although some market participants said the Polish banks would be capable of providing all the money.

Groupe PSA, the French car maker, has sold more than €500m of Schuldscheine, as a flurry of French firms find fortune in the market.