UK

Linde, the multinational industrial gas company, is making a strategic equity investment in ITM Power, the UK hydrogen machine manufacturer, as part of a fundraising plan worth up to £58.2m.

Metro Bank could be forced to overhaul its strategy for growth after agreeing to pay an exorbitant rate on a new senior bond this week, in desperation to meet a looming set of regulatory requirements. Tyler Davies reports.

Holding Group Almex, the investment vehicle owned by Dinara Kulibaeva and her husband Timur Kulibayev, closed books on a 10% stake in Halyk Bank on Thursday, sold via a marketed sale of global depositary receipts in London and Astana.

As IPO investors are considering the advantages of Kaspi, the Kazakh fintech and e-commerce firm seeking to list in London, its CEO, Mikheil Lomtadze, talked to GlobalCapital about the share sale and the advantages of being the Alibaba of central Asia.

Swiss investors’ thirst for yield was quenched in some style at the end of last week, when Russian Railways printed the largest Swiss franc transaction of the year from an emerging market borrower.

Allied Irish Banks was met with a strong response for an additional tier one (AT1) in the euro market on Wednesday, just a month after its national peer Bank of Ireland had to pull a subordinated bond amid fears about the impact of the UK’s departure from the EU.

Metro Bank came back to the sterling market on Wednesday to make a second effort at selling non-preferred senior debt, raising the pricing on its offer by 200bp to 9.5%. Market participants suggested the transaction was already a ‘done deal’, but warned that the interest costs would weigh very heavily on the bank’s profit and loss statement.

MUFG has hired a new head of its derivatives solutions group in EMEA from HSBC.

Globalworth Real Estate Investments, the London-listed real estate investment trust focused on commercial properties in Romania and Poland, is preparing to raise up to €276.45m of fresh equity to finance its bulging pipeline of acquisitions.

Fitch Ratings has downgraded Metro Bank a month after giving the UK lender its first rating. It expressed concern about Metro’s recent failure to raise debt for looming regulatory requirements, but the bank is insisting that it still has plenty of options on the table — including looking at solutions in the private market.

Merlin Entertainments, the UK-listed theme park operator, has launched a £2.4bn ($2.96bn) loan syndication to back its £5.9bn buyout by a private equity consortium. It is expected to add bonds to the financing package.

Suez Water Resources, the US subsidiary of Suez, the French water and waste management company, has issued $375m of US private placements, with the longest note expiring in 40 years — a rarity for dollar PPs.