Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs this week managed to place the year’s largest accelerated bookbuild follow-on into a European non-financial company, despite the continuing eurozone crisis and threats of a Europe-wide downgrade by ratings Standard & Poor’s.

The €2.1bn deal - where banks commit to sell a large chunk of stock on behalf of a company or investor in a short space of time - was carried out for RWE, an Essen-based energy company that said in August it wanted to raise €2.5bn to raise capital and shore up its balance sheet.