UK

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.

The board of BCA Marketplace, a UK secondhand car dealer, announced on Wednesday that it would recommend a £1.9bn offer from TDR Capital to take the company private. The deal marks a coup for Jefferies, which is lead financial adviser to BCA, a role it won following the hire of a UK M&A team from HSBC last year led by Philip Noblet.

The City of London Corporation, via its endowment fund The City’s Cash, has launched first US private placements (PP), roadshowing the prospective notes this week and next. 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.

Voltalia, the French renewable power producer, launched a €376m rights issue on Monday to finance an increase in capacity, and won a new investor — the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This is believed to be the first time the EBRD has bought a public equity in western Europe.

TCS Group Holding, the Russian financial services company owned by founder Oleg Tinkoff, has completed a $300m primary capital raise by selling Global Depository Receipts (GDRs) on the London Stock Exchange, gathering a strong following from investors for the deal.

The £540m IPO of Airtel Africa, the African division of India’s Bharti Airtel, has been priced at 80p, the bottom of the initial range, following a $100m anchor order from an existing investor, according to a source close to the transaction.

Axa SFH issued its debut covered bond on Thursday, attracting a comfortably oversubscribed order book for the positive yielding eight year, which was priced at close to fair value. At the same time, Nationwide Building Society took advantage of the Swiss National Bank’s more generous repo arrangements to issue a three-part covered bond denominated in Swiss francs.