UBS Warburg has led the first sizeable equity-linked deal in Europe since July as the bank sold a €100m ($97m) exchangeable bond from UBS into Royal Dutch Petroleum, a holding company that owns investments in the Royal Dutch/Shell Group.

There were no European equity-linked bonds in August and since then there have been only seven small issues raising €77m in total, according to Dealogic, the investment banking firm. In the first nine months of this year European equity-linked issuance fell 32% from the same period last year to €19.7bn.