Austria

The public sector dollar market on Wednesday showed that it had more than enough depth to cope with a pair of issuers bringing deals in the same maturity with just a basis point of difference in initial price thoughts, as both trades came in size and at tightened pricing. Another agency is set to dip into the demand on Thursday.

Fearful of missing out and, in the absence of competing credit supply, investors piled into six covered bonds on Tuesday with a combined value of more than €6bn.Royal Bank of Canada’s deal epitomised the state of investor frenzy as it was able to issue the largest deal of the year with a negative new issue premium.

A decision by Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen Girozentrale (Helaba) to issue a rare three year covered bond as part of a two part offering, paid off and put its covered bond offering head and shoulder above other deals issued this week by BayernLB, HVB and UniCredit Bank Austria.

Small benchmark covered bond deals issued on Wednesday by Deutsche Bank’s Spanish subsidiary and UniCredit’s Austrian subsidiary were slow to build and priced in line with initial guidance. This led some to question whether this was due to a degree of unease with their parent groups or whether investors baulked at the pricing process.

Austria’s OMV has signed €3bn of revolving credit facilities, in what bankers that worked on the deal are calling the largest existing deal of its kind in the Austrian market.

Austria’s Verbund has joined the ESG-linked revolving credit facility fray, with the electricity company signing what leads say is the first such deal in the country.

Austrian oil and gas company OMV sold its first senior corporate bonds of 2018 on Monday after it attracted €3.9bn of demand for a pair of €500m notes with five year and 10 year tenors.

Borealis, the Austrian petrochemicals maker, sold its largest corporate bond tranche on Wednesday. The deal came two days after Austrian oil and gas company OMV, which owns more than a third of Borealis, had issued its own dual tranche deal.

On Monday, Austrian oil and gas company OMV’s first senior corporate bonds of 2018 attracted €3.9bn of total demand for a pair of €500m notes with five year and 10 year tenors. The demand allowed the issuer to tighten the spread by more than 20bp on the longer tranche.

Liberbank plans to issue its first covered bond, Danske Bank in Finland is set to issue its first deal in three years and UniCredit Austria has announced a roadshow hot on the heels of a Pfandbrief issued by the German subsidiary.

Guarantor: Republic of Austria

A quartet of public sector borrowers brought small dollar deals this week that were fine but unspectacular, which SSA bankers said was down to a confluence of factors. There are hopes that with the market likely quiet next week for the US mid-term elections and Federal Open Market Committee meeting, conditions could return to their best for the albeit limited funding windows left in 2018.