Rabobank

In a rare sign that environmental campaigners are having an impact on the financial industry, the burden of financing the Ecuadorian Amazon oil trade has shifted between banks in the past six months. But it is clear the banking industry is supporting the trade in more ways than have yet been uncovered.

Bank bond spreads widened on the back of negative sentiment this week, but a handful of lenders were still able to take advantage of a constructive backdrop in the new issue market.

Smurfit Kappa, the Irish paper and cardboard packaging company, has signed its first sustainability-linked loan for €1.35bn, at the same time as setting new targets to reduce its carbon footprint and water use and employ more women.

Practitioners believe 2021 could be the year when sustainable finance finally breaks out of the narrow confines it has inhabited so far and spreads more widely across the economy.

Yankee issuers stormed into the US dollar market to lock in record low levels of funding, despite this week’s turmoil in Washington, DC.

The Swiss National Bank said it is “willing” to increase the scope of its foreign exchange interventions to keep the Swiss franc’s value down, despite the US Treasury labelling it a ‘currency manipulator’ this week.

Louis Dreyfus, the Dutch agricultural trading company, has amended and extended revolving credit facilities totaling $697.6m, weeks after the company got its first investment grade rating.

The FIG pipeline has slowed to a drip, with the upcoming ECB meeting and Brexit talks bookending what could be the last week of open windows for issuance.

Two banks landed tight with environmental, social and governance (ESG) themed deals this week: Crédit Agricole settled at a record low on its social bond debut, while DZ Bank came even tighter with its first senior non-preferred green bond.

Crédit Agricole landed at an extremely tight level on Wednesday morning as it made its social bond debut with a seven year senior non-preferred deal, following in the footsteps of last week's near zero yield print from Svenska Handelsbanken.

The UK’s SSE Renewables and Norway’s Equinor, two energy companies, have signed what lenders say is the largest ever offshore wind project financing, a £5.5bn package for a wind farm off the UK coast.

Mercuria and Gunvor, the Swiss commodity and energy trading firms, have signed credit facilities for their US businesses, with both companies adding more banks to the deals.