JP Morgan is in line to celebrate a hat trick of bumper equity deals this week after being picked by engineering group Babcock International as sponsor and joint global-co-ordinator on a £1.1 billion rights issue -- the biggest in the UK so far this year.

Babcock announced plans for the rights issue, on which the company's joint brokers JP Morgan and Jefferies will be joint co-ordinators, to the stock market this morning. JP Morgan is acting as sole adviser to Babcock on a conditional deal to buy helicopter and fixed-wing emergency services company Avincis from private equity duo KKR and Investindustrial.