UK

The Financial Conduct Authority has set out its proposals for reforming the UK IPO process, as the markets regulator looks for ways to maintain the UK’s eminence in capital markets.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) paid a remarkably slim premium to print a new final-year callable senior bond from its holding company on Wednesday, after the issuer saw a opportunity to capitalise on the outperformance of UK credit in 2017.

Barclays was met with hot demand for a new additional tier one trade in the undersupplied sterling market on Tuesday, with the trade quickly racking up more than £6bn ($7.35bn) in orders.

Laird, a UK supplier of mobile phone parts to Apple and Samsung, launched a £184m ($225.55m) rights issue after it released its full year 2016 results on Tuesday.

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.