The Bank issued on 29 April 1986 a notice setting out arrangements which would for the first time allow certain companies to make issues of short-term (up to one year) debt securities in sterling, ie sterling commercial paper, without publication of a prospectus. This followed a notice issued on 19 March 1985 which facilitated the issue of short-term corporate bonds. Together, the provisions of these two notices represented a considerable widening of the short-term financing opportunities available onshore to companies, which had previously been restricted largely to bills of exchange, syndicated loans, advances and overdrafts. This article considers the development of the sterling commercial paper (SCP) market up to August 1987.
The early development of the sterling commercial paper market