What do Volkswagen’s return to the debt markets, Germany’s biggest stock exchange listing this year and a bond from Europe’s crisis-era rescue fund have in common?

The surprising answer is UniCredit, the Italian group whose investment bank was a bookrunner on those three deals this year – an €8bn issue from VW, its first since it became embroiled in an emission scandal in 2015; the €1bn Frankfurt listing of food-delivery app company Delivery Hero, Germany’s largest in 2017 to date; and an €8bn deal for the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the biggest since early 2014.