British Telecom has opened the door to a wave of cheaper and more efficient rights issues in the UK market, after its record breaking £5.9bn (€9.7bn) deal became the first ever rights issue to be processed electronically through Crest.

The decision to run the deal electronically cut back on over 500,000 bits of paper, replacing them with 30,000 electronic messages. It also saved millions of pounds in back office and administrative costs and postage.