UK

DS Smith, the UK packaging company, has offered to buy Spanish rival Europac, with £1.65bn of financing underwritten by US banks already prepared for the transaction.

Royal Bank of Scotland shares are trading flat to the sale price of a £2.5bn block sold by the government last night, a good result for the banks involved after a trade that risks being politically tricky.

Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust has raised £170m in long-dated US private placement notes.

Marc Lewell is returning to London after three years running JP Morgan’s Asia-Pacific syndicate, prompting the appointment of a new head of the desk.

Larry Thompson, vice-chairman of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp, on Tuesday suggested that populist rhetoric in the US might be overshadowing President Trump's strong choices of leaders in independent financial oversight agencies.

The UK government has resumed the reprivatisation of RBS, the British bank that was nationalised during the financial crisis, having launched a £2.6bn block trade.

EN+, the London-listed aluminium and hydrogroup which was torpedoed by US sanctions in April, could soon be free as its majority shareholder Oleg Deripaska prepares to sell down his 66% stake in the group to below 50%.

Goldman Sachs and three other major banks have signed up to the project to build a joint electronic bookbuilding system for the US investment grade market, joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, and JP Morgan and giving the new platform a strong shot at total market dominance. Goldman’s merchant banking arm sold Ipreo, the main rival to the new project, last week.

Toronto Dominion Bank issued the largest sterling covered bond from a non-UK bank on Thursday. The transaction, which follows the issuer's successful euro covered bond on Wednesday and comes amid a dearth of FIG issuance, demonstrates the strength of the product and TD’s name.

The UK Debt Management Office’s next syndication will be a new index-linked Gilt in the 20 to 25 year part of the curve. Some investors and Gilt-edged market makers had called for that tenor a week ago, although others had been looking for a longer dated issue.

Phoenix Group has set the terms on its £950m capital raising to fund its proposed acquisition of the UK and European businesses of Standard Life Assurance from Standard Life Aberdeen.

BC Partners has completed the first selldown of shares in Sabre Insurance, the UK specialist insurer, since its £287m flotation on the London Stock Exchange in December.