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To view the digital version of this report, please click here. To purchase printed copies or a PDF of this report, please email gloria.balbastro@thomsonreuters.com Politicians preaching to their neighbours have also administered their own austerity medicine at home to maintain a semblance of economic sanity amid the eurozone malaise....

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. For many Germans the pain is keenly felt. This is a country that carries the weight of history – much of it painful and still willingly fresh in the memory – on its shoulders. For decades, Germans – from politicians in Bonn and Berlin to autoworkers in Munich and Wolfsburg – abjured the role of Europe’s “leader”, a role gladly seized by Paris.  Yet since the onset first of the financial crisis, then of the eurozone’s ongoing debt crisis, Berlin has been forced to adopt the role of...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. It has been a thin year so far for the covered bond market, one of the hardest in the past decade. The first quarter of the year saw only €36bn covered bond issuance globally, according to Barclays. Thanks to continued attempts by eurozone banks to deleverage their balance sheets the supply simply isn’t there. So much so that at the beginning of April Barclays revised its global supply forecast for 2013 from €175bn to €110bn. The lack of supply has been even more marked in Germany...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. They are out there if you look hard enough – humble celebrities, honest politicians, reflective football players, diamonds-in-the-rough all. Then there’s the most surprising abnormality of the lot, and an institutional one to boot: the investment bank packed to the gills with affable individuals still boyishly eager and filled with intellectual rigour, all acting like the last five years was just a very, very bad dream. To be fair, for Berenberg Bank, a private German lender that...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. CVC Capital Partners’ knock-out €3bn bid for German metering business Ista in April has delivered some much-needed cheer to the German loan market. The European private equity firm’s surprise entry into the bidding, backed by a single loan from Deutsche Bank, shows that lending appetite is strong and that for the right deal in the right sector, buyers are keen to execute deals. The question is whether this will translate into a broader recovery at a time when corporate confidence...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. With banks nervously keeping an eye on the latest regulatory diktat from Brussels and Basel, there is little surprise that European corporates have increasingly turned to the bond market for funding. No more so than in Germany. Last year the country’s investment-grade companies sold €70bn bonds, a jaw-dropping 96% increase on 2011 and 121% more than in 2010, according to RBS. More to the point, pricing for German corporates has noticeably come in. “We are at low levels now. In...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. The word Zeitgeist is going global, and it is travelling in a German car – for when it comes to corporate issuance, the spirit of the era is definitely Teutonic and the auto giants are setting the pace. A high-octane performance by carmakers Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler reflects the wider activity of German corporates in the debt markets as issuers capitalise on continuing demand to diversify funding. “Demand for corporate credit out of Germany has remained very strong and the...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. When WestLB was formally wound up in July 2012, following a series of trading scandals and losses, the future for Landesbanken appeared gloomy, with consolidation seemingly the most likely destiny for the remaining eight banks. A year later the outlook appears to have improved, and talk is now focused on financial security and restructuring rather than wholesale change. “Given the large amount of state support that they received it was natural following the financial crisis that the...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. On June 19 2012 it looked as if the ambition to list chemicals company Evonik would never be achieved. The previous day management, banks, and its two main shareholders – RAG-Stiftung and CVC Capital Partners – agreed to cancel the latest in a string of efforts to complete an IPO. Failure, however, was not an option. RAG’s raison d’etre was to list Evonik and sell down its 75% stake through public markets, while CVC was reaching the natural end to any private equity firm’s...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. The hunt for alternative sources of yield has turned the Schuldscheindarlehen (SSD) into one of the hottest areas in the credit market.  In particular, corporate SSD volumes rocketed in 2012, as issuance more than doubled from 44 deals worth €6.4bn in 2011 to 115 worth €13.8bn, according to Thomson Reuters LPC data. “2012 was the breakthrough year for the growth of the SSD market outside Germany as investors looked for as investors looked for alternatives to loan products which were...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. At the beginning of April, an investor consortium led by Patrizia Immobilien paid €2.45bn for BayernLB’s shares in GBW. The listed housing company’s portfolio is made up of more on than 32,000 flats in and around Munich. One of the bigger Germany real estate deals of the year so far, it looks like a canny move. The equity investment is likely to yield between 4% and 4.5%, but some analysts have suggested that yields might be as much as 5.5%. After all, apartment prices in Munich are...

To view the digital version of this report, please click here. The impact of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive on Germany will, in some ways, be minimal. Unlike the UK it does not have a thriving hedge or private equity fund industry that would feel the greatest impact from the rules. Yet while most German funds will meet compliance with few problems, the impact will be felt broadly: around 80% of the fund business in Germany will be classed Alternative Investment Funds. For many German funds regulation is nothing new. “Special...