France

The Agence France Trésor (AFT) has suspended Morgan Stanley’s primary dealership in French government bonds, making it the first bank to suffer such a proscription.

CEA Investissement, the corporate arm of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, has sold €104m of shares in Soitec, the French semiconductor company, through an auctioned block trade won by Société Générale.

STMicroelectronics, the French-Italian semiconductor maker, has raised $1.5bn through the sale of new convertible bonds, the company said on Tuesday.

Wordline, the French payments company, has returned to the equity-linked market to sell a new five-year €600m convertible bond at a negative yield.

In this round-up, the already fraught relationship between the US and China faces fresh tests, as both countries continue announcing retaliatory measures against each other.

The Swiss franc market is having a busy year, with a strong showing from corporate and SSA issuers helping the market to its highest year to date volume since 2015, according to Dealogic.

Capza, the European private investment platform focused on small and medium-sized enterprises, completed a €450m capital raising for a new equity fund this week, taking its total assets under management to more than €4bn.

HICL Infrastructure, the UK-based infrastructure equity investor, has launched a capital raise to repay £75m worth of debt in order to shore up its finances for further acquisitions.

Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC) is planning to return to the Swiss franc bond market in the latter half of 2020 after an 18-month absence to refinance an upcoming redemption. Elsewhere, the Canton of Geneva returned to the market for the third time this month as it marches towards a record year on the capital markets.

Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations issued its yearly Samurai bond on Thursday, raising ¥20bn ($190m) with a dual tranche.

Funding officials from Caffil, Credit Mutuel Arkéa and La Banque Postale gathered in early July to take part in a roundtable to discuss how they navigated their way through the peak of the crisis when covered bond market volatility was at its highest, and how they expect to manage funding in its aftermath, as the pernicious impact of the pandemic takes its toll.

Crédit Agricole won an appeal against the European Central Bank on Wednesday against fines levied against the treatment of some of its instruments as common equity tier one (CET1) because the central bank had provided “inadequate reasons” for penalising the French lender.