Switzerland

Domestic borrowers led Swiss franc issuance this week. On Monday, the multi-line insurance company Baloise Holding (rated A- by Standard & Poor’s) returned to the market for the first time since January, with a three-tranche Sfr425m ($432.7m) trade led by Credit Suisse and UBS. Before this issue, its largest outstanding bond in the Swiss market was its Sfr300m 2.875% 10 year trade maturing in 2020.

Salt, the Swiss telecommunications company controlled by a French billionaire Xavier Niel, is touring Europe this week marketing senior secured notes, as it attempts to refinance a large chunk of its existing debt.

Credit Suisse was marketing a 10 year bullet senior bond on Tuesday, avoiding negative yields by choosing a tenor longer than seven years. At the same time, Sparebank 1 announced it was readying its green debut in senior format.

The summer’s long drought in international issuance in Swiss francs ended with a flourish this week. A cluster of well-received transactions were priced on Tuesday and Wednesday, all of them offering positive yields and warmly welcomed by an investor base increasingly frustrated by a diet of negative-yielding issues in the domestic market.

Yields continued to tumble in the Swiss franc bond market this week with Pfandbriefbank issuing the first 30 year covered bond to be sold with a negative yield, following Münchener Hypothekenbank (MünHyp) striking a new record low for covered bond yields with a nine year trade.

Market participants are confident that FIG issuance will pick up next week but there are concerns around secondary performance. They are likely to pay close attention to how this week’s deals from Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse fare before marketing their own.

Credit Suisse sold a dollar-denominated additional tier one (AT1) bond on Wednesday. Despite hefty demand for the notes, the issuer only revised the pricing by a small margin as market turmoil increased through the day.

Swissport, the world’s largest provider of cargo and airport ground services, increased the loan portion of its debt raise at the expense of bonds as investors demanded steep yields in a volatile market.

Münchener Hypothekenbank (MunHyp) is introducing commercial paper to its existing Ecological ESG Pfandbrief programme.

Swissport, the world’s largest provider of cargo and airport ground services,has increased the loan portion of its debt raise at the expense of bonds amid a volatile August market.

Swiss investors who have been kicking their heels for the last month or so have been kept busy this week by Munchener Hypothekenbank (MunHyp), comfortably the most frequent international borrower in the Swiss franc market this year.

UBS Group skirted volatility in global financial markets to issue an 11 year non-call 10 year senior unsecured bond in dollars on Tuesday. The Swiss lender offered a small premium to investors, with a final spread of 140bp over US Treasuries.