UK

The big fall in the share price of UK outsourcer Capita on Wednesday led to fears of another large corporate collapse in the sector following Carillion's demise last month. But market sources saw the rights issue and turnaround plans, which caused the dip, as a way to avoid disaster as peer Serco once did with similar tactics.

The round of redundancies at Barclays Investment Bank has hit more senior figures, including the head of EMEA leveraged finance, a vice-chairman in ECM, the COO of EMEA banking, as well as other managing directors across the origination businesses.

Shanghai Pudong Development Bank is set to open its newly authorised UK branch for business next week, with initial plans for wholesale banking and vanilla securities trading.

France is hoping to add its name to a growing list of sovereigns in China’s Panda bond market, having discussed the possibility with at least two of the country’s biggest state-owned banks.

Capita, the UK outsourcing services firm which runs London's congestion charge system, has laid out an ambitious turnaround plan including a £700m rights issue, but the stock plummeted as its profits projections fell short of expectations.

Endeavour Mining, the Toronto-listed, UK-headquartered gold exploration company active in west Africa, has raised $300m to refinance debt with a debut five year convertible bond issue that was well subscribed, according to several sources close to the deal.

The London Stock Exchange’s Order book for Retail Bonds (ORB) opened the year with a $180m issue from Burford Capital, the litigation finance firm.

The two previous 100 year corporate bonds sold in the sterling market had received excellent responses and on Wednesday London-based charity the Wellcome Trust joined the century club, proving that investors' demand for ultra long bonds is far from satisfied.

Entertainment One, the Canadian record label and entertainment company, has raised £53m, in an accelerated bookbuild, to partly finance its acquisition of the remaining shares in The Mark Gordon Company, the Hollywood production company behind films such as Saving Private Ryan, in which it already owns a 51% stake.

Informa, the UK media group, has made a formal £3.9bn takeover offer for events company UBM, and has agreed a bank loan to fund the roughly £653m cash part of the purchase.

London-based charity the Wellcome Trust, which funds biomedical research, announced on Tuesday that it plans to become just the third issuer to sell a 100 year sterling bond. The Aaa/AAA rated charity met with investors on Tuesday morning and plans to issue the bonds as early as Wednesday.

A report published by the UK House of Lords on Saturday encouraged the government to “resist” new European Commission measures to relocate systemically important clearing houses in London to EU member states.