SEB

A handful of borrowers are circling the Nordic markets with an eye to printing after the end of first quarter results. But the looming blackouts have not deterred every type of credit from tapping the market as a range of corporate, covered bond and financial issuers placed paper this week.

Norwegian krone SSA supply is outpacing Swedish kronor so far this year, driven in part by a demand for zero risk weighted assets in the market. Among the latest names to access the Norwegian market is the African Development Bank, which sold a new social bond as part of a dual-currency issue.

Euronav, the Belgian tanker company, has signed a sustainability-linked revolving credit facility, as the shipping industry comes under increasing scrutiny over its carbon output.

World Bank and KfW sold socially responsible bonds in Scandinavian currencies on Tuesday.

EnBW, the German electrical utility, and the financing arm of a Dutch truck company, DAF Paccar Financial, hit screens with highly rated euro trades on Monday. Central bank bond buying higher than forecast, pushed investors to oversubscribe the deals even though the spreads on offer were thin.

Hennes & Mauritz, the Swedish clothing retailer, earned blowout demand for its sustainability-linked debut bond, but bankers off the trade said on Thursday that the exuberance was indicative of just how far capital markets have strayed from reality.

H&M, the Swedish clothing retail company, has received blowout demand for its debut bond, as the “perfect storm” of ESG criteria and European Central Bank rule changes to allow it to buy sustainability-linked bonds saw the order book bulge to almost 11 times subscribed at guidance.

Hennes & Mauritz, the Swedish clothing retailer, has chosen to issue its first ever bond in the novel sustainability-linked format.

Deutsche Bahn rolled into the Swedish krona market this week to sell its biggest non-euro deal since 2012.

Norway comfortably set a new order book record as it came to the market for just its fifth ever syndicated transaction on Wednesday.

Norway began taking indications of interest on Tuesday for its fifth ever syndicated transaction as it continues its path towards becoming a regular issuer of public benchmark bonds.

Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL) ventured into the Swedish and Norwegian markets for the first time this week. With many of Europe's big banks absent from the MTN market this year, dealers are instead chasing more unusual deals from rarer names.