UK

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.

Just Group, the UK life insurance firm, said on Monday that it was looking to sell a rare tier three bond in the sterling market.

The UK government has left stakeholders completely in the dark over its plans for financial services after Brexit leading to calls from some EU politicians that the City try to bypass the stalled government talks and offer a payment for access to the bloc.

China and the UK have still not announced the launch date of the London-Shanghai Stock Connect, but international investors are already positioning themselves to get the most out of the new link, Gary O’Brien, a senior custody banker at BNP Paribas, told GlobalRMB.

The first issue of 2018 on London Stock Exchange’s Order book for Retail Bonds (ORB) is set to be a dollar offering from Burford Capital, the litigation finance firm.

Sterling issuance was thin this week relative to its scorching start to the year although there was still room for Kommunalbanken to print its largest ever deal in the currency. Strong supply is on the way from the UK Debt Management Office but while demand is as good as some bankers have ever seen, other deals may be limited by technical factors.

Shares in Dechra Pharmaceuticals, the UK veterinary pharmaceuticals company, closed 8.7% higher on Thursday after the company raised £105m of new capital to partly finance its acquisitions of AST Farma and Le Vet in the Netherlands.

Two influential derivatives trade bodies have questioned elements of a European Commission proposal that would centralise supervisory powers with pan-European securities watchdog ESMA, arguing that national supervisors have a “strong knowledge of local markets” and that the move seemed “premature”.

Chinese property developer Country Garden Holdings was forced to pull a Rmb1.8bn ($281.2m) three year Panda bond this week after investors demanded a better return amid rising volatility, writes Noah Sin.