IFR German Corporate Funding Roundtable 2016: Participants

Against this uncertain backdrop, our expert panellists held a spirited and engaged discussion about the state of the market in the face of a series of extraordinary macro and technical factors, and assessed how the funding landscape was holding up for German corporates. Of course, the injection of central bank liquidity in Europe has acted as a volatility buffer and made funding markets pretty resilient. Borrowers have taken advantage of the good times and deftly navigated around volatility events, having benefited from a variety of receptive...

IFR: Good afternoon, thank you for attending our fifth annual roundtable on German corporate funding. We have seen a lot of volatility and uncertainty this year, in part fuelled by monetary policy divergence between the US, Japan and the eurozone. We have negative bond yields in Europe even for new issues; a new US president-elect not to mention geopolitical conflict. How has the market held up to all this pressure? Ingo Nolden, HSBC: We’ve all scratched our heads at times, wondering how the market has been so resilient. We saw a very weak...

IFR: What about the bond market? Dominik Buric, LBBW: It’s a question of whether corporates have the relevant funding requirements. When we talk to corporates, they tell us it’s not a question of funding M&A transactions; it’s about finding the right target, one that fits your business model, your strategy. Funding it, through equity or hybrids or bonds, or even with a basic acquisition loan, is no problem today. For general capex, corporates have improved their balance sheets and working capital management and they are now in a great...