The FTSE 100 gained on Monday after fears about the global financial system eased and investors stepped in to pick up beaten down stocks.

The FTSE 100 was nearly 1% higher at 7,476 at the time of writing, while the German DAX added 1.2%. A sharp rally in Deutsche Bank shares helped lift the mood in Europe.

“Bargain hunters were out in force for Europe’s banks following the chaos of the past few weeks. Deutsche Bank jumped more than 4% in early trading, regaining some of the territory lost last week when its share price plummeted,” said Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell.

Although Deutsche Bank shares found some support, the cost of insuring against the bank defaulting on their bonds still remained high. Deutsche Bank Credit Default Swaps (CDS) will be closely watched in the coming days and further increases could spark another wave of volatility.

In addition to stability in Deutsche Bank’s equity, news First Citizens Bank had acquired SVB assets instilled a sense the crisis was past its worst.

“Helping to repair sentiment towards the sector was the news that First Citizens Bank is to buy $72 billion of Silicon Valley Bank assets at a discount of $16.5 billion. Together with HSBC’s purchase of SVB’s UK operations and UBS’ takeover of Credit Suisse, investors will be hoping for some stability from now on in the broader sector,” said Russ Mould.

The positive developments at SVB and Deutsche Bank spilled over into the FTSE 100’s banks with Barclays, Natwest and Lloyds gaining on the day. Standard Chartered was still feeling the heat and trading in negative territory.

The gains elsewhere in the index were broad; 89 of the FTSE 100’s constituents were trading in positive territory at the time of writing.

Some good news from the Calgary, Alberta-based Canadian Overseas Petroleum (LON:COPL) has just been announced.

From a combination of the group’s main bondholder, institutional shareholders, and new investors the company has completed its $14.8m Convertible Financing.

In the process the group issued 70.3m new warrants, while in tandem it settled off another $2.2m of debt to various creditors by issuing 26.84m new shares at a premium to the current market price.

Its interests

The £20m capitalised group is engaged in the exploration, appraisal, development and production of oil and gas assets with producing assets and reserves principally in the Converse and Natrona Counties in the US state of Wyoming, where it is the operator and majority working interest owner of three oil producing units.

The company also has interests in sub-Saharan Africa through its ShoreCan joint venture in Essar Nigeria, as well as independent interests in other countries.

The ‘game changer’

Last December the group declared a ‘game changer’ at its Frontier 1 oil reservoir in Wyoming. Oil production started in January before severe winter storms impacted to slow operations.

Referring to the financing President and CEO Arthur Millholland stated that:

“This is an important raise for COPL. 

After some bumpy months operationally, and in our refinancing negotiations, this raise supports the company to an intended RBL and for the capital investment required to achieve a material production uplift.

We appreciate the support of our leading investors and are excited about the deployment of this capital.”

The group’s shares improved to 5.32p on the news.

Nuformix, the fibrosis and oncology drug repurposing company, have released positive results from their NXP002 study and outlined the next steps in the development of the treament.

NXP002 is being developed as an inhaled treatment for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. The most recent study utilising a human IPF lung tissue model found NXP002 to be non-toxic while producing a strong anti-fibrotic effect.

With the possibility NXP002 targets different disease pathways to existing standards of care, the findings of the study also suggests NXP002 could be used in addition to existing treatments to enhance an anti-fibrotic effect.

Nuformix’s next steps include additional studies on donor lung tissue and the further evaluation of current results to identify disease pathways.

“All parties are delighted with the results from this study, which are as good as we could have hoped for and are the first results from what is the most advanced iteration of this ‘close to patient’ IPF disease model to date,” said Dr Dan Gooding, Executive Director of Nuformix.

“The reduced variability in the resulting data allows us to have high confidence in both NXP002’s anti-fibrotic activity alone, but also in the added anti-fibrotic performance it can deliver on top of existing standards of care.  Additivity to standard of care is the most important aspect because it’s the simplest option to investigate in a clinical study and is therefore fast becoming a top priority for potential licensing partners.”

“Having seen the quality of these results, our aim now is to generate datasets from three donors in both human IPF and healthy lung duration of action studies.  These data can be generated quickly and will be essential in opening up new discussions with potential licensing partners and support overall progression of the NXP002 programme.”