UK

New technologies are marching into the securities issuance process. This week came bids to shake up two very different kinds of private debt — traditional corporate Schuldscheine and funky structured notes.

The €13bn rights issue of UniCredit was acclaimed as the Equity Capital Markets Deal of the Year at GlobalCapital’s 2017 ECM Awards, which were presented on Tuesday night at our third ECM Awards Dinner, held at One Whitehall Place in London.

Investors this week called on the UK Debt Management Office (DMO) to extend the sovereign’s curve with its next syndication. Meanwhile, the buy-side cheered an agreement on a Brexit transition deal and analysts eyed a Bank of England rate hike in May, after its latest Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting this week.

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.

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.