UK

The privatisation of Kazatomprom, the Kazakh producer of natural uranium, moved ahead on Wednesday after bookrunners kicked off a marketing roadshow and set a price range for the listing.

UK supermarket retailer Tesco announced on Monday that its most recent tender offer had been oversubscribed, completing a successful liability management exercise (LME) after selling €750m of bonds a fortnight previously. The company hopes the success of the deal will help it on the way to regaining its investment grade status with all rating agencies.

The UK’s The Restaurant Group (TRG) has agreed to buy compatriot pan-Asian dining chain Wagamama, and is set to finance the bulk of the deal by raising £535m through new debt and a rights issue.

EU Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis on Tuesday moved to reassure derivatives markets that the Commission would enact measures to avoid market disruption to clearing in a hard Brexit scenario.

The UK's buyer base has welcomed a reduction in Gilt sales for this financial year, but have warned of economic pressure from the UK’s negotiations to exit the European Union.

Tottenham Hotspur is planning to be the latest football club to sell corporate bonds after its new stadium’s construction delays and cost have again increased.

European Commission officials have played down concerns expressed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over a controversial EC proposal that seeks to revise European oversight of foreign clearing houses. The comments garnered a curt response from a senior CFTC official.

Barclays announced this week that it is calling $2.65bn of retail preference shares. The bank said it is redeeming the instrument now, several years after the first call date, due to confidence in its capital position.

This month’s global equity sell-off has devastated markets and investors' performance for the year, and Europe’s large equity capital markets houses are thinking of calling time on a challenging 2018 to give a battered buy-side some time to recover, writes Sam Kerr.

The UK’s B&M’s debt financed expansion into the French market was branded credit negative by Moody’s on Thursday, with the ratings agency saying the acquisition holds material execution risk.

Standard Life Aberdeen announced on Wednesday that it was asking holders of a dollar-denominated tier two bond to change the documentation to reflect its new regulatory regime, after pricing a tender for other subordinated debt instruments earlier in the week.

The Bank of England recently warned that it would take a close look at the fast-growing sterling leveraged loan market, but there is both less and more to the story than meets the eye.