UK

Cineworld, Europe's second largest cinema operator, has increased the size of its revolving credit facility by £25m to fund its acquisition of five UK cinema sites.

Places for People, the UK housing company, on Wednesday sold £400m ($519.35m) of bonds with orders more than 2.5 times the offering size, despite tapping the market just two weeks after Moody’s cut its rating to A3.

Shell made a quick move from publishing earnings results to issuing a dual tranche bond on Wednesday, the euro market’s only investment grade corporate deal of the week.

UK retail sales in July increased 1.9% year on year, according to a report from British Retail Consortium and KPMG. But with loan pricing barely budging, there is unlikely to be much deal flow, especially refinancings, from UK retailers this year, according to two bankers.

European equity capital markets remain muted ahead of what many participants expect to be an extremely busy autumn window. Yet in London, there is one live deal of substantial size progressing steadily towards completion.

Two weeks into August and the anticipated summer slowdown is still not that slow, with big name borrowers continuing to test both the investment grade and high yield bond market, as well as bringing leveraged loans.

Shares in Melrose Industries, the UK investment firm, began trading ex-rights on Tuesday ahead of its £1.6bn ($2.08bn) rights issue on the London Stock Exchange.

Since the August 4 announcement that the Bank of England will purchase corporate bonds again, much chin stroking has occurred about the differences between the Bank’s approach and that of the European Central Bank. In at least one respect, though, the BoE's scheme seems superior.

The London Metals Exchange plans to offer a range of exchange traded and centrally cleared precious metal products, starting with gold and silver spot and futures contracts.

Tullett Prebon has teamed up with GMEX Group to launch a hybrid voice and electronic trading platform for foreign exchange options.

BP Capital Markets slotted into August’s smooth run of corporate sterling bond issuance on Tuesday, as it issued a benchmark seven year transaction that was priced inside its euro curve.

The share price of Melrose, the UK industrial buyouts specialist, leapt as much as 16% on Monday after the company said the window shop period of its acquisition of Nortek had expired, allowing the deal and Melrose’s jumbo £1.6bn rights issue to proceed.