UK

Metro Bank raised £303m from a primary non-preemptive placing after market close in London on Tuesday night but although it received a strong reception the stock traded down on Wednesday.

Greencoat Renewables, the renewable energy fund listed in Dublin and London, has raised €111m to fund Irish windfarm acquisitions.

Colin Withers left ING’s EM and high yield syndicate last week after seven years at the bank and shortly before Uzair Burney, a high yield syndicate official from Lloyds, is set to join the desk.

Julian Dunkerton, founder of fashion brand Superdry, sold a 5.5m share block in the company for £71m after the market closed on Monday.

Connect Plus (M25), the project company that manages the M25 motorway around London, has priced its first public bond issue, for £893m, to unwind interest rate swaps from 2009 and refinance part of a £1bn loan.

Foreign purchases of UK businesses will come under closer government scrutiny if a new white paper is approved, as loans bankers’ fears earlier in the year about M&A becoming tougher to get through UK regulators materialise.

At the end of a dead week for equity block trading in Europe, Barclays hit the market on Thursday night with a £78m sale of stock in Hays, the UK recruitment consultancy, on behalf of Equiom Turst, a Guernsey registered trust and a trustee of the Chainpoint Unit Trust.

The UK mid-market IPO, an often overlooked corner of the EMEA ECM galaxy, has had a good year despite the chaos surrounding the UK’s exit from the European Union. Many expect that to be the case even after Brexit given the market is a rich source of companies with strong growth profiles.

Future Plc, the UK magazine publisher, plans to raise £105m via a fully underwritten rights issue to fund its takeover of Purch, the US technology and science magazine publisher.

Investec Bank priced a new bond on Tuesday. It is the second bank in the past few weeks to execute a tender at the same time as issuing new tier two notes.

After a tough run for issuers, the euro corporate bond market appears to have headed for its summer holiday early this year. The sterling market, however, kept investors busy last week, and the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee meeting in August is being closely watched.

Post-trade infrastructure company Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) on Wednesday announced that it would open a new office in Dublin in an effort to sidestep uncertainties stemming from Brexit.