European corporate hybrid issuance remained resilient in 2025, with nearly EUR 38bn placed amid firmer market conditions, an active call schedule and attractive spreads. We expect issuance to stay robust in 2026, close to last year’s level.

TotalEnergies’ 2025 results reinforce the increasingly important role of capital discipline in the company’s forward strategy as it navigates softer and more volatile commodity prices.

Novo Nordisk’s recent warning of weaker-than-expected sales of its blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes treatments illustrates how scale can mask concentration risk in the pharmaceutical sector until a shock forces recognition of the problem.

The European chemical industry faces difficult quarters ahead, as the recovery in demand expected after the cyclical destocking in 2024 has failed to materialise, Scope Ratings says.

Santander’s bid for Webster demonstrates its confidence in the US banking sector and its long-term business prospects, despite the current scenario of high political risk, deterioration in public finances and weakening of governance standards.

The credit outlook for European sub-sovereign issuers is balanced overall though credit trajectories continue to diverge amid growing sovereign rating constraints.

European utilities are navigating an intensive, multi-year power-grid investment cycle. While capex has risen gradually in recent years, the vast scale of planned upgrades for the decade ahead remains the main challenge to the sector’s credit quality.

The targets of the strategic plan and the bank’s 2025 performance both align with expectations already embedded in our ‘A’/Stable/’‘S1’ ratings.

The root causes of growing credit stress remain firmly in place despite investors’ relatively benign response to structural shifts, leaving a mixed but increasingly negative outlook for corporate credit through the rest of 2026, says Scope Ratings.

Wednesday, 11 February 2026