UK

UK chemicals giant Ineos’s German styrenics subsidiary is marketing €500m of senior secured notes and a €680m equivalent term loan B, with an intention to issue a €300m dividend to its parent company, controlled by billionaire Jim Ratcliffe. The remaining proceeds will be used for refinancing all of its term loans and some of the upcoming investments.

UK private placement advisers and agents are keen to speak to North American investors about their appetite for debt from UK local governments, seen by many as the next source of growth for PPs in Europe after the central government raised the rate at which it lends to them.

Capital Group, one of the largest asset managers in the US, bought 13.45m shares in NMC Health on January 8, according to a disclosure on the London Stock Exchange. They were worth about £160m. That was the day after a £375m block trade by Saeed Al Qebaisi and Khaleefa Al Muhairi, two of the three controlling shareholders in the UAE health company, which faced criticism from short-seller Muddy Waters of its balance sheet and financial statements in December.

JP Morgan and MUFG have been appointed Everton FC’s financial advisers to arrange roughly £500m ($651m) of financing for the football club’s new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock in Liverpool. One source close to the prospective deal told GlobalCapital “all options are on the table” regarding funding routes.

Houlihan Lokey, the US boutique investment bank, has the ambition to become a serious player in the European ECM advisory market after hiring an MD from Rothschild.

Navigating the covered bond market will not be without its challenges in 2020. The Targeted Longer Term Refinancing Operation (TLTRO), European Central Bank deposit tiering and the Covered Bond Purchase Programme have collectively distorted the market, but added to this concoction is the impact of negative interest rates. Against this backdrop issuers, investors and investment bankers gathered in Munich in November to discuss the outlook for covered bonds. It is likely that new issue premiums will gradually tighten, but the path is unlikely to be smooth. January is typically the busiest month, but in 2019, issuers that funded this early paid the highest spreads. And, with the ECB expected to buy in the region of €4.5bn covered bonds a month, issuers will not feel compelled to move early. But the ECB monetary policy has unwelcome implications. Covered bonds have begun to lose value against government bonds, and this will extend if the ECB is unable to loosen restrictions on government bond purchases.

CVC Credit Partners has provided an acquisition facility and a unitranche loan to Sabio, a UK firm providing customer engagement tools to bluechip companies.

Equity capital markets bankers are lining up further accelerated equity sales after a series of successful block trades last week. They are hoping that market optimism persists to allow them to print trades before corporate blackouts prevent insider sales.

The UK government should consider consulting on changes to the country’s listing rules after Brexit to attract more high growth companies to the London Stock Exchange, including allowing dual class share structures on the premium segment, according to Claire Keast-Butler, a partner at Cooley in London

US private equity group Apollo Global Management has completed the first selldown of stock in Watches of Switzerland, the UK luxury watches retailer, since its flotation on the London Stock Exchange in May last year.

Foreign and domestic banks flocked to the UK this week as they sought to take advantage of stellar funding conditions in the sterling market. Bankers said this was the first chance issuers had to benefit from opportunities in the currency following December’s general election, which removed a lot of short-term uncertainty around Brexit.

Shares in Sirius Minerals, the UK firm that is battling to build a mine for polyhalite fertiliser beneath the North York Moors, rallied significantly on Wednesday after the company said it was in advanced takeover discussions with Anglo American.