UK Sovereign

Intu Properties, the UK real estate investment trust, signed a £600m revolving credit facility on Friday. The five year loan carries a two year extension option.

Great Portland Estates (GPE) has signed a £450m revolving credit facility with a group of seven relationship banks to refinance two loans.

A weak performance from Royal Bank of Scotland’s repositioned investment bank, made worse by £400m of provisions set aside for an FX probe, has tarnished the state-owned lender’s third consecutive quarterly profit under new chief executive Ross McEwan.

China’s appetite for commodities and its rapid push for RMB internationalisation is resulting in an expansion of the offering for RMB-denominated commodities and derivatives products, such as the upcoming base metals mini futures contracts on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx)-owned London Metal Exchange (LME) and the September launch of the international board of the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

Syndicating a reopening of a 55 year bond in a month where sterling was shaken by volatility could have been tough for the UK Debt Management Office this week. But it passed the test with flying colours, attracting its largest book ever on an ultra-long syndication and breaking the 3% yield bogey for the first time.

CVC and Blackstone’s block sale of £260m of Merlin Entertainments stock struggled to gather momentum on Wednesday evening, but support from long-only UK investors the following morning dragged the deal across the line just in time for start of trading.

Louis Dreyfus — Geberit — Heathrow — Arkema

The US investment grade corporate bond market barely blinked this week when the US Federal Reserve called time on quantitative easing. Companies hit the market ahead of what is expected to be a bumper November for new issuance.

The $500m five year, non-callable senior bond Jaguar Land Rover sold on Tuesday began trading up at 100.75, gathering investor interest in a market environment that “is only now becoming more stable”, said the company’s treasurer.

Affordable Housing Finance, which raises debt for lending to registered providers of affordable housing in the UK, using a UK government guarantee, has tapped its 2042 secured bonds for £183.5m — and priced arguably through its own curve.

CVC and Blackstone’s sale of Merlin stock struggled to gather momentum on Wednesday evening, but support from long-only UK investors the following morning dragged the deal across the line just in time for start of trading.

The Bank of England (BoE) will begin work next year figuring out how to provide Islamic banks with Shariah-compliant liquidity facilities. Even without knowing what rates or requirements the prospective facilities will involve, the UK’s Islamic lenders — long starved of Shariah-compliant liquid assets — say anything will be better than holding cash.