RWE, the German energy company, has established a €5bn ($4.6bn) debt issuance programme from which it will issue its forthcoming jumbo Eurobond issue and short-term commercial paper.

Debt programmes allow companies to execute repeat issuance from one set of documents and therefore save a significant amount of money in legal fees. It also speeds up the execution process since the platform for issuance is already in place, and allows companies to diversify their sources of funding by selling assets with the same characteristics to a wider investor base.