KfW

Export Development Canada (EDC) sold its first sterling bond of the year on Thursday, placing a three year note. The issuer was able to increase the deal beyond its minimum size even with a volatile sterling market on Thursday morning.

KfW placed its first Swedish krona deal in a year on Monday, as a handful of investors dipped into what dealers dubbed a “new normal” in pricing that has wiped 30bp-50bp from coupons.

KfW sold its second Canadian dollar deal of the year on Tuesday, a three year fixed rate note. The deal benefited from increased interest in Canadian dollars — largely in response to falling interest in Australian dollars along with a favourable perception of the country — but also suffered from investor reluctance to buy fixed rate paper.

KfW is expected to sell its second Canadian dollar deal of the year on Tuesday after mandating banks to sell a three year bond on Monday afternoon - the same day as it announced a reduced funding need for 2013. Syndicate bankers have been predicting increased interest in Canadian dollar debt in response to a lack of supply in the currency coupled with a weakening Australian dollar.

Finland is aiming to print a euro and a dollar benchmark in the autumn and may supplement the deals with an auction and t-bill issuance, SSA Markets can reveal.

Three borrowers are all contenders for summer benchmarks despite the volatility generated in the Portuguese government bond market this week following the resignation of two government ministers. The prospect of continuing supply after a volatile few weeks will come as encouraging news to market participants who in previous years have seen bad news on one peripheral eurozone sovereign shut down the entire SSA market.

KfW was set to price a $1bn floating rate note as SSA Markets went to press. The deal has latched on to investors’ recent desire for floating rate paper and comes shortly after the agency visited investors in the US.

KfW hired a trio of banks to sell a short-dated dollar floater on Monday afternoon, as Rentenbank looked to price a $325m tap of three year floating rate notes.

Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten (BNG) may lead a small handful of issuers looking to print deals before investors pack their buckets and spades and head to the beach for the summer. The Dutch agency joins its compatriot Nederlandse Waterschapsbank (NWB) among the names that may well access public markets before August.

KfW took advantage of a clear issuance window on Tuesday to bring a long-awaited euro benchmark, shrugging off uncertainty over how fast rates will rise in the run up to the Federal Open Market Committee’s meeting on Wednesday. The result was hailed as “encouraging” by market participants who also had the spectacle of a €1bn tap of the EIB’s recent 10 year EARN to take comfort from.

This week's funding scorecard focuses on some of Europe's key supranational and agency borrowers. Forthcoming editions will bring updates from other French, German, Spanish and Scandinavian names.

With sentiment turning against new issues this week after a prolonged rates sell-off, the benefit of front-loading issuance programmes is there for all to see. There has been nothing as drastic as markets shutting down to contend with, but a spate of weak deals this week has proven that the relentless bid that had sustained the new issue market for over six months was not indefatigable.