Spain

Public sector euro benchmark supply is set to restart after a lull last week, with a eurozone sovereign and a French agency hitting screens on Monday for pricing on Tuesday.

Catalonia cancelled its ratings contract with S&P Global last Friday to save costs, according to an official at its Treasury. But the source added that rating agency reports “don’t show the actual picture of Catalan finances” due to Spanish central government control.

Investors were queuing up to buy Bankia’s latest additional tier one transaction on Monday, as the Spanish bank reopened the subordinated bond market for Southern European borrowers.

Amadeus, the Spanish IT company that provides systems for the air travel industry, sold its fourth deal in as many consecutive years on Thursday. The new deal was its first multi-tranche offering and the eight year tranche was the longest the company had offered to date.

Banco Santander brought the first sterling deal in more than six weeks with a non-preferred senior transaction, in a rare instance of a Spanish bank choosing to access funding in that currency.

Spanish telecoms company Telefónica sold its second euro-denominated senior bond of 2018, benefitting from one its quietest years of issuance with a single digit new issue premium.

Spanish insurance firm Mapfre offered a tier two bond on Friday, in the first insurance deal in more than eight weeks. The issuer paid up, particularly as its outstanding tier two gapped out substantially after the deal was announced on Thursday.

Banco de Sabadell appeared to struggle to get much traction in the euro market on Wednesday, when it offered the first unsecured bond from a Spanish bank in more than three months.

The bumper IPO of Cepsa is likely going to give investors something different to look at when the market reopens in September with investors already excited by a number of new listings.

Market participants should not become complacent about the battles that are still taking place over the handling of the resolution of Banco Popular, because the outcome is likely to form the blueprint for what will happen when any large European bank fails in the future.

Transposing the European Commission’s covered bond directive into Spanish Cédulas law should result in multi-notch Cédulas upgrades, Fitch said. This could help allay concerns about other legal reforms that will lower collateral protection, and help boost confidence that the impending overhaul of the Spanish legal framework can be executed deftly.

Imperial Brands, the UK tobacco group, sold a €265m block in Spanish retail distribution firm Logista after market close on Monday night, in order to raise funds to reduce its debt.