A group of heavyweight bankers – including Michael Sherwood at Goldman Sachs and Andrea Orcel at UBS – helped complete the largest overnight transaction ever in the European capital markets.

Santander, the Spanish Bank whose capital ratio was considered too low by many analysts, raised €7.5 billion overnight by selling new shares to institutional shareholders. The bank said this morning it had sold 1.2 billion shares priced at 6.18 euros apiece, a discount of 10% to the price the stock was trading at before it was suspended on Thursday.