UK

Investors put more than €2.25bn of orders into a rare operating company level senior bond from Royal Bank of Scotland on Thursday, as floating rate bonds appear as a "more attractive option" for an increasing numbers of issuers, according to bankers.

North London football club Tottenham Hotspur has signed a £400m five year loan with a group of banks to finance the building of its new almost 62,000 seater stadium.

The UK Debt Management Office is keeping its options open on a planned syndication for September, a deal some investors feel the sovereign should use to push its conventional curve out to 2072. Meanwhile, a French agency is bringing its first syndication in sterling for over two years.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) today announced that Ulrich Karl has joined the organisation as head of clearing services.

The European high yield market roadshowed more than £2bn of new sterling bonds from two issuers this week, both with single-B ratings and from industries investors watch with caution.

Alfa Financial Software has completed one of this year’s hit IPOs, which was priced at the top of its range. “Pretty well every respectable investor who thinks about technology, either as a generalist or a specialist, wanted to own it,” said a banker on the deal.

Standard Chartered has become the first non-Chinese bank in Singapore to close a dollar-renminbi FX forward trade via the onshore China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS), the firm said in a statement on Thursday.

Investors have called on the UK Debt Management Office to extend its conventional curve with a syndication in September — although the view is far from unanimous.

On Wednesday night, the vibrant trading in the equity blocks market continued with several large deals from Turkey and the UK.

A group of private equity firms have joined forces to merge UK insurance broker Towergate and four peers into a new industry player called Kirs, and this week launched a £800m bond to back the move.

UK corporates are preparing for the large UK banks to bring down their ring-fences, a move that could shake up the banking landscape and push more corporates to sign credit support annexes with their banks.

UK airport Heathrow landed orders for more than five times its £250m offering on Wednesday, in a week with less than €500m of new paper in sterling and euros in the high yield bond market.