France

Africa Finance Corp, the pan-African development finance institution, printed its first green bond on Monday.

Rating: Aa2/AA

Caisse d’Amortissement de la Dette Sociale (Cades) and the International Development Association set new size records this week, with the former bringing the biggest ever social bond in dollars and the latter issuing its biggest ever bond since entering the capital markets in 2018.

Caffil took advantage of extraordinarily strong market conditions on Monday to issue a sizeable eight year covered bond slightly inside fair value and was followed on Thursday by Compagnie de Financement Foncier with the second largest covered bond of the week, and though it was also priced tightly, demand was far less compelling.

Altice France leapt straight into the market after Friday’s surprise announcement that owner and founder Patrick Drahi would be taking the company private. Research from Federated Hermes shows that the credit spread premium for a private company has dropped to virtually zero for the first time in 20 years.

French visual effects and digital services company Technicolor has finished a €330m recapitalisation as part of its efforts to exit from bankruptcy proceedings.

Fédération des caisses Desjardins du Québec (CCDJ), Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) and Sparebanken Vest Boligkreditt (Svegno) were set to issue covered bonds with zero new issue premiums on Thursday. But after a surprisingly busy week, the market is now "running out of steam" with order books were much slower to build and subscription ratios far lower than transactions issued earlier this week.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, one of the world's largest owners of shopping malls, launched a €9bn-plus turnaround plan on Thursday, which includes a €3.5bn rights issue. The aim of is to reduce its leverage to help it withstand the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fédération des Caisses Desjardins du Québec (CCDJ) mandated leads on Wednesday for a five year and Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) mandated leads for a 10 year deal, to take advantage of exceptionally strong market conditions with both deals likely to be launched on Thursday.

French agency Cades and the International Development Association returned to the dollar market for the first time since the summer break on Tuesday to bring a pair of five year socially responsible deals.

Altice France is marketing a €900m equivalent eight year bond across dollars and euros, coming hot on the heels of Friday’s announcement that Patrick Drahi, the billionaire owner of the telecoms group, was trying to take Altice Europe private.

Société Générale has added to the recent trend for green deals in the FIG market by launching a €1bn 'positive impact' bond, backed by €5bn of demand.