Swedbank

Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) refrained from pushing into record territory with the coupon on its new dollar-denominated AT1 on Tuesday, as European banks begin testing new lows for yields in the asset class.

The financial institutions bond market has absorbed an enormous volume of supply over the past month, putting a strain on trading levels for outstanding securities. FIG bankers nonetheless expect that spreads could start to tighten once more in the coming weeks, amid a calmer flow of new issuance.

Swedbank and UniCredit got away with paying small new issue premiums for senior bonds this week, after utilising an extremely favourable backdrop for issuers in the euro market.

Sweden’s Peab has almost doubled the size of its local currency credit facility, with the construction and civil engineering company releasing a chunk of the financing once an acquisition finalises.

Swedish agency Kommuninvest doubled the size of its June 2023 green bond on Tuesday through a Skr3bn ($309.8m) tap. The tap was issued with a negative yield — rare for the Swedish krona market — and is the issuer’s first negative yielding green print since October 2016.

ING sold a dollar-denominated additional tier one (AT1) this week, adding an influx of supply in the asset class in recent weeks. It will have the option to redeem its new bonds twice a year after the first call date, instead of the usual five years in all of its outstanding bonds.

Europe's bond market reopened for the autumn issuance season this week — but it is a new bond market. The summer's queasy bout of bearishness has pushed government bond yields to unprecedented lows and these are now for the first time being tested as a platform for private sector bond issuance.

Swedbank was supported with 14 times as much demand as it needed for a $500m additional tier one bond on Thursday, helped by falling interest rates in the US. The deal could be the first of many from European banks, which are facing up to a busy call schedule for AT1s in 2020.

Participants in the financial institutions bond market had expected that issuers could hit screens with new transactions as early as this week, but so far macroeconomic and political uncertainty has discouraged them from putting investor appetite to the test this summer.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) has had to row back on fines for four Nordic banks for issuing credit ratings, after an appeal board found that the banks had not broken the rules negligently.

Finnish stainless steel producer Outokumpu has signed a €400m sustainability-linked term loan, used mostly for refinancing its short term debt, and featuring margin cuts if the company hits targets linked to workplace accidents and carbon emissions. It's a step forward in a leveraged finance market that has so far taken only tentative steps towards sustainability.

A trio of SSAs made the most of low yields in Danish kroner and Swedish kronor to print paper with coupons hovering around zero this week.