Was it Royal Bank of Scotland that gave Cattles a prod? It must be easier to launch a discounted rights issue in the wake of a record £12bn bank cash call.

As Alphaville pointed out yesterday, the RBS rights issue would be big enough to enter the FTSE 100 at number 30; by comparison, Cattles' £200m would be somewhere down in the FTSE Small Cap index. But nobody - least of all a specialist subprime lender - launches a rights issue just for the heck of it. By doing so, Cattles ran the risk of being dubbed an emergency in search of a rescue.