UK

Jes Staley opened up this week, explaining why Barclays has taken a contrarian bet to dedicate more balance sheet to the markets division of its investment bank this year.

LendInvest, the UK online property finance platform, has launched the second deal of the year on the London Stock Exchange’s Order book for retail bonds. The firm is optimistic on the outlook for sterling assets in the retail and property sectors, despite the headwinds faced by some issuers this month.

Details have emerged on £1.5bn of underwritten loans for the UK’s Phoenix Group, as the life assurance fund consolidator moves closer to its £3.24bn cash and shares purchase of Standard Life Aberdeen’s insurance arm.

Investors are calling on the UK Debt Management Office to extend the sovereign’s curve with its next syndication, as the buy-side cheered an agreement on a Brexit transition deal.

Financial firms are turning to artificial intelligence to catch perpetrators of market abuse and other breaches of financial rules.

Virgin Media raised £300m from a receivables financing note this week, a deal that despite being more complex than normal high yield bonds, was liked by fund managers.

Lloyds Bank issued its third covered bond of the year on Tuesday and its second in sterling, paying a fraction of the premium seen in the senior unsecured market, despite the large deal size.

UK property company Hammerson has signed a new £1.5bn three year revolving credit facility, bringing in a dozen banks for a financing aimed at slashing the funding costs of its acquisition target, Intu.

Santander UK Group raised €750m of floating rate notes (FRNs) in the euro market on Tuesday, as credit spreads struggled to perform on the back a recent surge of bank bond supply.

Many equity investors are still keen on Russian equities, despite the growing political tension between the country and the UK.

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has warned his international colleagues that while “crypto-assets do not pose risks to financial stability” now, this could change should the asset class become more “interconnected” with the regulated financial system.

It was no surprise to many market participants that Friday saw no new issuance in the corporate bond market after the busiest week of 2018. The conundrum to be solved now though is how the jumbo issuance will affect conditions in potentially the final full week before Easter.