UniCredit's eight High Yield & Leveraged Finance Conference took place on Tuesday, 18 May 2021 gaining huge interest from investors and issuers by allowing participants to deep dive into their investment and business strategies during an on-going very busy primary market.
This year's event, taking place once again as part of our Italian Investment Conference, attaining a record number of nearly 500 institutional investors and 100 corporates and Financial Institutions for the overall event, was delivered via a virtual format which promoted an intense dialogue between investors and issuers in One-on-One/small Group Meetings.
Furthermore, market developments have been passionately discussed during a lively, high caliber "Non-Investment Grade Capital Markets Roundtable", with, amongst others, the following take-aways:
- Market dynamics remain supportive with yields expected to remain at current levels with some pressure to move upwards by year end.
- The outlook for the leveraged finance asset class remains constructive on the back of strong technicals and continued inflows and positive returns generated YTD.
- Primary supply this year tracking to deliver a record year given the record YTD volumes driven by an expected increase in M&A activity.
- ESG is here to stay in the leveraged finance markets with the main consideration to drive this forward becoming a more standardized approach from both issuers and investors.
UniCredit confirmed its leading position in the European HY capital markets, ranking #5 2021 YTD in EUR, by leading and executing 20 high yield deals across its corporate and financial sponsor franchises within only eight weeks. Furthermore, UniCredit confirmed its status as the "go-to" bank for Italian issuers (#1 bookrunner of Italian HY Bonds 2021 YTD) via its established and wide access to institutional investors.*
*2021 YTD (1 Jan - 17 May 2021), source Dealogic Cortex, as per 18 May 2021