Winterflood has now successfully enabled retail investor access to a second new Gilt offering and has expanded the number of platforms, investors and the amount raised. In February, Winterflood enabled access to the 4% 2031 gilt through its Winterflood Retail Access Platform (WRAP) and on 30 April, WRAP was used again to enable retail access to the latest new gilt offering, the £4 billion 4.125% 2029.
The platform was used by Hargreaves Lansdown, Interactive Investor, AJBell and a number of others to provide their retail investors with the opportunity to access the new gilt at the average price in the auction. This was set at 99.421 providing a yield of 4.251%. An increase in investors resulted in a greater uptake of the offer via WRAP.
“WRAP is a great way for investors to input and manage orders into a bookbuild that we can see in real-time,” says Michael Smith, Head of DCM. “At the moment we are using WRAP to enable retail access to new gilt issues because they are designed with low denominations and retail in mind. What’s of particular interest is that there are a number of anticipated regulatory changes that may be implemented later this year in the UK bond markets designed to encourage corporate bond issuers to switch back to the use of more retail-friendly low denominations. If that happens, it is going to be great for individuals and wealth managers who are all keen to get access to bonds in the primary market. WRAP will be able to link issuers with the retail investor base in the same way as these Gilt trades.”
Winterflood is proud to champion access to retail-inclusive equity and fixed income products with our partner platforms via WRAP. Gilts are the first step to developing much better awareness and availability of fixed income products amongst the UK retail investor base.
If you would like to discuss the article or topic in more detail, please contact: Michael Smith, CFA, Debt Capital Markets at Winterflood Securities
