UK

RPC Group, the UK maker of rigid plastic packaging, has secured a 96% take-up on the £552m rights issue it launched to reduce its leverage after making seven takeovers since September.

Barclays is looking to restart additional tier one (AT1) issuance in the sterling market this week, taking advantage of a lack of supply in the format and strong interest from investors over the course of 2017.

TSB Bank has received regulatory approval and a rating for a £5bn residential mortgage-backed covered bond programme, the first new programme from a UK issuer since 2011.

Shareholders and bondholders should pressurise banks to clean up their acts on climate change, sustainable finance experts said this week.

Rating: Aa1/AA/AA

The UK Debt Management Office (DMO) breezed through the final syndication of its financial year on Tuesday, printing at a record low real yield with its biggest ever book — despite a postponed start to opening books and murmurings about falling demand for inflation linked paper.

The new issue bond and loan markets will have a swathe of new standards to digest this year, as the FICC Market Standards Board hits its stride and produces a wide range of additional guidelines, to be adopted by its member firms in London and beyond.

The superlatives “fantastic”, “surprising to the upside all the time” and “huge tightening” were being thrown around about the public sector dollar market this week — the only missing ingredient appears to be supply.

The Bank of England plans to start later this year examining more closely the banking sector’s exposure to risk from climate change. That means banks will have to start telling the regulator more about the risks they face and how they manage them.

LXI Reit, the UK real estate investment trust, has completed one of the first IPOs on the London Stock Exchange this year, raising £138m ($173.25m) to invest in a diversified portfolio of UK commercial and residential properties.

The spate of Reverse Yankee will grow on Friday with Avery Dennison Corporation expected with an eight year euro transaction.

Finnish technology company Nokia is set to become the first European company to issue a euro high yield bond for four weeks. Meanwhile, UK food producer Bakkavor will repay all its notes.