UK Sovereign

UniCredit has hired a new head of high yield syndicate from a private equity firm.

Exotix, a frontier, emerging market and illiquid debt merchant bank, has hired Jakob Christensen as a director and senior economist.

For anyone who works outside the rarefied world of financial markets, Markit might sound like something an errant tomcat gets up to. But after listing his company for $1.5bn on Nasdaq in June just eleven years after founding it in his garden, CEO Lance Uggla is unlikely to be suffering much angst about his choice of name.

Serco, the UK outsourcing group, had a horrible day in the stockmarket on Monday, as its shares plummeted by 32% after it announced £1.5bn of impairment charges and a £550m rights issue. After that, the shares remained stable for the next three days.

Spreads of EU and US high yield corporate bonds began to tighten in November, yet their Norwegian counterparts have continued widening, pushed by the current global oil price depression. Many issuers in Norway's busy high yield market are linked to the offshore oil industry.

Alliance Automotive, the French-UK car parts distributor, is set to issue €325m of high yield bonds to refinance its acquisition by Blackstone and the company's founders from Weinberg Capital Partners in August.

GlobalCapital has opened the poll to decide the winners of its Syndicated Loans & Leveraged Finance Awards. These awards are the only ones decided by the loan market itself and they are based solely on the public vote.

UK cinema chain Vue has issued €70m of six year senior secured floating rate notes to back its acquisition of Space Cinemas.

The Bank of England's unveiling of plans to look into providing Shariah liquidity facilities for UK Islamic banks was one of the highlights at last week’s World Islamic Economic Forum in Dubai. It’s a great idea, but there’s just one problem — this should have been done ages ago.

It’s the moment you have all been waiting for. More hotly anticipated than the reopening of the Russian loan market, GlobalCapital has opened the poll to decide the winners of its Syndicated Loans & Leveraged Finance Awards.

UK challenger bank Virgin Money has received enough demand from investors to list in London next week, only a day after the start of bookbuilding.

British media and events firm UBM is set to raise about £565m through a rights issue that will part fund its acquisition of a peer, Advanstar.