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The London Stock Exchange closed its UK retail bond sale six days early on Wednesday, announcing in delight that it had raised Pounds 300m -- the biggest corporate issue so far in the UK's revived retail bond market.
This avenue of issuance was opened in February 2010 when the LSE launched its Order book for Retail Bonds (Orb), a listing and trading system designed to make it easy for private investors to buy and sell bonds in a regulated market, in sizes of Pounds 100.
The platform has been a success, with issuance growing steadily, if not rapidly. Being in a closed period, the LSE was unwilling to comment much beyond its official statement, but it can be assumed that, having seen the Orb take off, the LSE felt it was about time it issued a retail bond itself.
To the extent that the issue was designed to promote the Orb, especially to other potential issuers, it appeared to succeed handsomely.
"It's what the market needed," said a banker at one of the leads, Barclays, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland. "We'd seen a number of smaller deals come and this shows the market can handle large trades for bigger...