UK

It took just over two hours on Wednesday morning for the IPO of Trainline, the UK transport booking website, to get covered after the company opened the books on its £630m IPO on the London Stock Exchange.

IPO investors in Europe are taking more time over new listings and subjecting each to greater levels of scrutiny than before.

Huatai Securities has already covered the minimum target for its global depository receipts (GDRs) IPO on the London Stock Exchange, according to a source close to the deal.

Oberbank sold a senior bond in euros on Wednesday, following in the footsteps of NatWest Markets, Luminor Bank and Svenska Handelsbanken, which on Tuesday also issued senior deals. NatWest attracted the largest order book for its floating rate notes.

Euro and dollar benchmarks issued by Nordea, Lloyds, Korea Housing Finance Corporation (KHFC) and SMBC on Tuesday was a fillip for covered bond market participants suffering through volatile credit market conditions that have caused price expectations to fall.

Huatai Securities, the Chinese brokerage, has set the price range for its $1.65bn sale of global depositary receipts on the London Stock Exchange, enticing investors with a healthy discount to the Shanghai-listed A shares.

IPO investors appear to be putting a high premium on company fundamentals when looking at new listings, focusing less on thematic trends and more on underlying numbers, as shown by the listings of Watches of Switzerland and Marel.

The UK’s Emmerson is in talks of a project finance loan of up to $230m, with the deal for the potash extraction company expected to be syndicated among a handful of commercial banks and export credit agencies.

HgCapital Trust, the UK investment firm focused on unquoted investments, has unveiled plans to raise £80m of fresh capital to finance its pipeline of investments.

Invesco has cut its stake in AJ Bell, the Manchester-based investment platform, after the stellar performance of the stock since the company listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2018.

Swiss Re, the Swiss reinsurance business, has come to market with the IPO of its UK life insurance business ReAssure, potentially one of the largest London IPOs of the year if it successfully completed.

Barclays Capital was looking to issue an additional tier one bond denominated in sterling on Thursday. The deal came after Banque Fédérative du Crédit Mutuel issued a tier two instrument on Wednesday. Both took advantage of an upswing in market conditions for subordinated debt.