UK

Société Générale has begun its planned round of redundancies and the first name GlobalCapital has associated with the cuts has been with the bank for over a decade.

Shares in Synthomer, the UK producer of aqueous polymers, closed 1.3% higher on Wednesday after the company announced a £204m rights issue to finance its expansion in the US.

Ade Ademakinwa will rejoin Deutsche Bank as head of its European financial institutions syndicate desk, just as a senior and longstanding member of that team departs.

The EU’s decision not to extend equivalence to Swiss exchanges and Switzerland’s subsequent retaliation is a perfect example of why the measure is an insufficient framework for future EU-UK financial services relations after Brexit.

Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets, the non-ringfenced arm of Lloyds Banking Group, has made its capital markets debut. The UK bank went private to place short-end paper in both fixed and floating rate formats, ahead of a debut in the public market later this week.

The City of London Corporation, via its endowment fund The City’s Cash, has held its first roadshow for its inaugural US private placement notes. The funds will be partly used to finance the consolidation of the Billingsgate, Smithfield and Spitalfields wholesale food markets at a new site in Dagenham, Essex.

ANZ has restarted its loan syndications business in Europe, hiring two senior bankers in London.

The largest shareholder in Aston Martin, the UK luxury car maker, is considering buying another 3% of the company after its share price almost halved since its IPO on the London Stock Exchange in October last year.

The UK’s National Express has become the first company to sign a loan benchmarked against Sonia, as part of NatWest’s pilot programme to shift away from the scandal-hit Libor standard.

The UK Debt Management Office (UK DMO) has appointed four banks to lead the syndicated reopener of its 0.125% 2041 index-linked Gilt, which is planned to take place next week.

Orange, the French telecommunications company, has sold the rest of its shares in BT Group, its UK rival, for £486m.

Shares in Airtel Africa are down at 68.5p on their first day of trading in London, over 14% below the IPO price of 80p a share, while VW’s truck division Traton is down almost 2% on its first day in Frankfurt.