Europe

Shares in RWS Holdings, the UK translation company, closed 14.6% lower on Wednesday after it raised £185m, 19% of its share capital, through a daytime capital increase to partly finance its $320m acquisition of Moravia, the Czech provider of technology-enabled translation and localisation services.

Quantile Technologies has completed its first compression run for client derivative positions held at LCH, executing the exercise in euro interest rate swaps.

Exotix, a research firm and investment bank has made three senior hires to expand business in frontier markets.

On Wednesday, Italian supermarket chain, Esselunga, became the first non-utility issuer to sell a benchmark corporate bond since Iliad’s €650m deal on October 5. The company’s debut deal saw one tranche priced at a lower yield than Italian government bonds.

Norwegian state owned grid operator, Statnett, priced its debut benchmark euro corporate bond on Wednesday, continuing the recent supply of utility issuers selling longer dated new issues.

Italian telecoms firm Wind called on the high yield market on Wednesday, as it planned to refinance most of its debt with a dual currency five tranche offering, deploying 20 bookrunners in the process.

A day after announcing results, Morgan Stanley came to the euro market on Wednesday with two tranches of senior debt bringing the bank’s total issuance in the currency so far this year to €6.25bn.

Belarusian food retailer Eurotorg tightened price guidance on Wednesday for a $300m-$350m bond to 9.125%-9.25%. Syndicate officials away from the deal said that level was much wider than they expected for the note but a lead manager has launched a staunch defence of pricing.

The public sector debt market is providing high volumes of funding at astonishingly tight spreads as investors brush off political concerns and scramble to pick up what supply remains for 2017. However, central banks around the world are weighing on investors’ minds.

French car hire group Europcar opened the high yield bond primary market on Monday with new debt to fund the acquisition of Spanish peer Goldcar, demonstrating how little investors are worrying about the escalating crisis between Catalonia and Spain over the former's push for independence.

Vice-chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) Anneli Tuominen has said that the body could issue a warning on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), a method of capital raising using cryptocurrencies on a blockchain.

The European Commission has asked the European Banking Authority (EBA) to consider how European Secured Notes (ESNs) should be treated for regulatory purposes. The future of ESNs is expected to depend on their regulatory treatment, bankers said.