UK

After casting the net “far and wide” for a new chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, HM Treasury has landed on the Prudential Regulatory Authority’s own chief.

Haitong Bank has hired three senior bankers in the UK to bolster its European investment banking platform, as the Chinese brokerage looks to raise its profile in cross-border M&A and capital raising.

Cardiff University has mandated three banks for its debut bond, the latest offering in a run of debt issuance from the UK higher education sector, writes Ross Lancaster.

Europe’s corporate bond market may be in a shabby state, but bankers are expecting a crop of public and private deals from a prestigious group of borrowers: UK universities and charities, write Rob Cooke and Toby Fildes.

Chemring, the UK defence contractor, said on Thursday that it would issue £80.8m of new shares to reduce its debt, after profit shortfalls last year.

Falling oil prices and China concerns sent credit spreads to the record wides of recent years this week as equity markets plummeted, with a credit index options expiry coming right at the sharp end of the spike and adding to the turmoil.

European stocks rose on Thursday, as European Central Bank president Mario Draghi offered a supportive, if vague, acknowledgment of the market’s struggles. But bankers said they would need several consecutive days of rising markets to regain confidence in this quarter’s prospects for primary issuance.

UK banks could look to stockpile their funding in 2016, as the country’s forthcoming EU membership referendum will cause capital markets to snarl up later in the year.

Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank Group, the UK mid-sized bank being spun off by National Australia Bank, had by day three of bookbuild received more than enough demand to place all of the shares in its London IPO.

Investors have taken up the vast majority of the shares offered by RPC Group, the plastic packaging maker, in a £233m rights issue it launched last month.

A corporate bond syndicate banker has been made redundant by Lloyds Bank.

Britain's banking market is a frenzy of new arrivals and challengers to the old order. The Bank of England even set up a New Banks Unit this week to welcome them all. But for most of history, the trend has run in the opposite direction.