UK

Barclays has printed one of the largest dollar senior trades from a European bank in recent memory, as it and Santander UK took home $5bn of holding company debt between them on Tuesday.

UK banks have wasted no time in plundering a deep dollar market for holding company senior debt this week, while euro investors have been restricted to a variety show of covered bonds.

BGC Brokers, the interdealer broker, is making a push into the competitive world of over-the-counter derivatives portfolio compression and has already taken out over €800bn notional of swaptions.

Acadia Healthcare, the US psychiatric and behavioural health care provider, has agreed to buy UK peer the Priory Group from Advent International for around £1.5bn.

Lloyds opened the sterling covered bond market on Tuesday with a three year floating rate bond. The deal encouraged another issuer to look to tap the market with the same instrument.

Keval Shah has been promoted to head of bond syndicate at Lloyds Bank, GlobalCapital understands.

Barclays has offered to buy back up to £7.5bn of senior unsecured notes, and could shortly be in the market with fresh holdco debt as it looks to satisfy regulatory capital requirements.

Any hopes among European credit traders of easing back into 2016 with a peaceful first week were shattered from the outset on Monday, as spreads gapped wider due to China’s stock market woes and oil price volatility arising from Saudi Arabia’s new stand-off with Iran.

Electra Partners and Patron Capital have agreed to buy Grainger Retirement Solutions, the home reversion equity release business of Grainger plc, for £325m.

The GlobalCapital editorial team has picked what it believes to be the standout bond issues of 2015 across the financial institutions, public sector, emerging markets and corporate bond markets. We selected the trades that we think will be remembered for their success in challenging conditions, for making the best use of the demand available to them, or for having made a longer lasting impact, such as the re-opening of a market. The FIG Deals of the Year 2015 winners are presented here.

The UK covered bond market is likely to contract in 2016, and with concerns over Britain’s exit from the European Union likely to mount, the sterling covered bond market could prove more attractive than euros. Despite that, UK mortgage lending has been vibrant and UK issuers are expected to contribute a sizeable portion to next year’s overall covered bond supply.

In 2015 GlobalCapital asked loan market participants for their votes for the Syndicated Loan, Leveraged Finance and Private Placement Awards 2016.