UK

Coventry Building Society did well to raise €500m of seven year funding with demand of €1bn on Thursday, but bankers warned that investors are close to reaching their limits on UK exposure, and the next issuer cannot expect the same result.

Marks & Spencer has completed its £601m equity capital raising to fund a transformational join-venture with Ocado, following a rights issue and rump share placement

Lloyds Banking Group found room to tighten pricing by 50bp for a new additional tier one (AT1) this week, though investors are having to second guess what a new prime minister in the UK might mean for the country’s approach to Brexit. At the same time Barclays added to its recent activity in the subordinated bond market, opening books on a tier two on Thursday.

Electrocomponents, an industrial and electronics distributor headquartered in London, has entered the US private placement market to refinance existing notes, according to sources in the market.

The long-awaited London-Shanghai Stock Connect faced its first test this week as Huatai Securities went on the road with its sale of global depository receipts (GDRs) on the London Stock Exchange. More issuers could follow as mainland investors hunt for opportunities to use their offshore capital, said market participants. Jonathan Breen and Aidan Gregory report.

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.