Europe

Barclays has promoted from within to fill the role of head of investment banking for continental Europe that has been vacant since Carlo Calabria left earlier this year to concentrate on a special purpose acquisition company.

Reinout Böttcher is leaving UBS, where he was head of global banking for Switzerland, for a vice-chair role at JP Morgan in Zurich.

Robinhood’s mission to democratise stock markets is taking its inevitable next step with its own initial public offering, of which it says it will sell between 20% to 35% to retail investors. But while opening up the IPO investor base beyond the institutional investor clique sounds good in theory, such transactions remain extremely risky for retail investors.

The SSA bond market is playing host to three SRI labelled deals in euros this week, with no conventional debt slated for issuance at all so far.

The European Commission rounded off its pre-summer funding with a dual tranche outing this week. Despite the huge size raised, the execution was remarkably smooth, as is becoming a signature for the EU. But while the EU’s credentials as one of the top SSA issuers are beyond doubt, questions remain as to whether it is a supranational, or a quasi-sovereign issuer of eurozone safe assets.

Metropolitano de Tenerife, the public transport company that operates the Tenerife tram system, made its bond market debut on Tuesday, raising €130m with a 15 year green bond.

UBS opened the European bank earnings season on Tuesday with a strong set of results from its M&A and capital markets businesses, which CEO Ralph Hamers seized as an opportunity to play up the importance of talented bankers over the generous application of balance sheet.

Taylor Maritime Investments, the investment trust focused on the international shipping industry, announced an equity capital raising on Monday, just under two months after pricing its $253.7m IPO on the London Stock Exchange.

Europe’s new generation of special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) are starting to make deals to combine with unlisted companies, testing the region’s nascent market.

The Prudential Regulation Authority gave more detail on the likely direction of reforms to the risk margin and the matching adjustment on Tuesday, as it launched a quantitative impact study for the review of Solvency II in the UK.

Trading levels given are bid-side spreads versus mid-swaps and/or an underlying benchmark and bid-yields from the close of busiess on Monday, July 19. The source for secondary trading levels is ICE Data Services

Charlotte Weir is leaving Barclays after more than 20 years with the firm, most recently as head of corporate debt capital markets in EMEA, for a job at another bank in London.