UK

Industry participants lobbying the Financial Conduct Authority on its plans for implementing the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) in the UK are planning on focusing their efforts on the areas of MiFID where the regulator has national discretion.

Grosvenor Fund Management has completed the refinancing of Grosvenor Liverpool Fund, owner of the 2.4m square feet Liverpool One shopping centre.

Royal Bank of Scotland is moving forward with its plans to divest its Williams & Glyn branch network, but it is as yet unclear whether the sale will be done as an IPO or a straight sale.

A director has left Crédit Agricole in the latest of a string of departures from the French bank’s hybrid capital and liability management team.

RPC Group, the London-listed plastic products maker, is raising £232.6m in a rights issue to back its acquisition of GCS Group, the manufacturer of lids and dispensers.

National Australia Bank has laid out its plans to float its UK mid-sized bank unit CYBG in London early next year.

David Lloyd Leisure, the UK gym and spa firm, has final replies due at close of business on Monday for its £380m loan recapitalisation.

The loan market brought in the Christmas period in style at the Loan Syndicate Managers' Forum carol service last Wednesday. The singing was angelic, the mulled wine delicious and the sermon inspired some intriguing ideas.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) London has become the lender’s third branch to issue a dollar bond in just over a month. This is part of the issuer’s plans to ramp up its presence in the international debt market with bankers expecting more of its branches to join in.

Standard Chartered and Lonmin both begin new chapters in their stories today, with fresh capital from rights issues. In both cases the underwriting banks had to work for their fees, as the stories required explaining and each deal ended in a rump placement today.

Santander UK has beaten a path that could become well trodden by European banks in the next two years, printing a holdco senior unsecured deal in the Tokyo Pro-Bond market as it looks to broaden its investor base for issuing loss absorbing debt.

Lloyds Bank's shares rose over 2% on Thursday after the Court of Appeal ruled a series of high coupon enhanced capital notes (ECNs) sold to retail investors in 2009 had become useless for future UK stress tests and could be called at par.