The £833m (€1.3bn) rights issue by ICI, the UK chemicals company, came to a smooth close on Thursday with strong demand for the accelerated sale of the shares that were not taken up providing a further boost to the new issue market.

This week the initial public offering of Xstrata, the Swiss mining company, on the London Stock Exchange, was seven times oversubscribed by investors and traded up from its issue price. JP Morgan was global co-ordinator and bookrunner of the offer. Cazenove and Deutsche Bank were joint bookrunners.