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.

Every month saw collections underperform in 2025. Not even the more than doubling of proceeds in December could salvage the poor performance, as collections were still 32% lower than the average for that month relative to the previous three years.

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

Thursday 29 January 2026 - 15:00 (CET)

JD.com’s arrival in European consumer goods retail sets an important precedent for the sector and represents a further shift in commercial spheres of influence in the region.

Resilient profitability, solid asset quality and capital buffers make for a balanced base case for European banks. Alongside stable expected collateral performance, most covered bond programmes can withstand issuer downgrades of up to three notches.

Scope Ratings has published the performance overview of notes issued by Marzio Finance, a EUR 10bn securitisation programme backed by ‘cessione del quinto’ and ‘delegazione di pagamento’ (CQS) loans originated by IBL Banca.

Collections in November 2025 were around 40% below the three-year average for the month, and 3% lower than October. In absolute EUR terms, volumes received between September and November were stable in a narrow range.

European CMBS issuance accelerated in 2025 to EUR 8.7bn, almost 75% higher than the previous three years combined. We expect the momentum to continue, driven by the growing role of private credit in CRE financing and sustained demand for securitisation.