Scottish Widows has made its first foray into direct real estate lending with a £20m, 10-year term loan at 3.94% to Custodian REIT. The deal is believed to be the insurer’s first since it launched a debt platform in April with its parent, Lloyds Bank, to target the fixed-rate, long-term lending market in the UK.

HSBC, Lloyds Bank and French bank Natixis have participated in a £255m revolving securitisation programme backed by Jerrold Holdings’ portfolio of commercial property lending companies. The programme, named Lakeside Asset Backed Securitisation 1, will run until August 2018 and the funds will be used to back Manchester-based Jerrold’s commercial and residential property lending activities.

UK banks are expected to sell up to £35bn of property debt this year, more than double 2014's £14bn. The predicted figure should see the UK top this year's European transactions table for real estate debt, expected to total around €120bn, according to PwC's latest portfolio sales market update.

Wells Fargo and pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank have provided a total of £123m in two deals backing Clearbell Capital's purchases of retail, industrial and office assets. The loans priced at 200bps and 210bps over three-month LIBOR, respectively.

M&G Investments has provided a £140m, five-year refinancing facility to Cosgrave Property Group for The Liberty Shopping Centre in Romford, Essex. M&G is also providing an extra £13m for the partial redevelopment of the centre.

Replacing the special servicer on the DECO 15 - Pan Europe 6 CMBS will require the approval of all noteholders by extraordinary resolution, the High Court in the UK has ruled. The decision is a serious setback to Cheyne Capital Management’s attempts to have the special servicer, Hatfield Philips, removed and replaced with Solutus Advisors.

pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, which successfully floated last month, increased new real estate lending by 40% to €5.2bn for the first half of 2015, compared to €3.7bn for the same period last year. Almost half of the new lending, 45%, was originated in Germany, followed by the Nordic countries on 19% and the UK on 14%.

The European Banking Authority’s (EBA) proposed rules on slotting have come under fire from banking and real estate groups fearful of more onerous regulation. The EBA wants to standardise the slotting regime across the EU and is proposing to specify what factors should be taken into account and how they should be combined to determine the appropriate risk weights of loans.

Wells Fargo has provided an unsecured £75m revolving credit facility to Derwent London. The five-year facility can be extended by up to two years and can be increased by £25m during its term.

Danish life insurance company Sampension has completed its first two direct commercial real estate debt deals totalling DKK 500m (€67m), as it embarks on a cost-cutting initiative aimed at minimising third-party fees, reports Real Estate Capital's sister publication, Private Debt Investor. The two transactions have been made in Europe on a co-investment basis, said Kasper Ullegård, Sampension's head of fixed income.