Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg are leading a €930m ($1bn) capital increase for Banco Comercial Português (BCP), the Portuguese bank, which is the first continental European rights issue to have underwriting in place before its launch.

A banker close to the deal said: "It is common practice in the UK market. Last year as well as finding UK investors to underwrite non-UK deals, we educated European investors on sub-underwriting. It is nice to be able to put that work to use as we knew who would be interested and what type of deal they would want to be involved in."