Americas

Chinese banks now hold four of the top five spots in SNL Financial’s ranking of the world’s largest banks, while Europe’s global footprint is shrinking.

Foreign exchange settlement firm CLS has teamed up with LCH.Clearnet’s ForexClear platform to develop a service that will enable physical settlement of cleared FX products.

Increasing volatility correlation across different asset classes could be an early warning sign of a financial crisis, some investors and strategists have warned, even though options prices have yet to convey any panic.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange has introduced 10 equity option strategy indices to the investment world, with intra-day valuation.

UBS has taken over $7.5bn of orders for its latest AT1 offering, an impressive feat given the trade was Reg S only and was executed on the last Friday of July.

Bond market participants were left pondering whether the sell-off in Brazilian assets had been exaggerated after a negative outlook from Standard & Poor’s triggered a rally and stabilisation in credit spreads in the country.

With emerging market currencies taking a battering across the globe, local currency bond issues continue to be a tough ask. However, innovations in the Mexican market are providing an encouraging grounding for future deals.

European banks are being urged to use a wide open dollar market before the US Federal Reserve hikes rates later this year, with Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS already lining up dollar additional tier one trades, writes Tom Porter.

A pair of North American financial names took advantage of strong demand for shorter dated floating rate Australian dollar paper this week.

High-grade US dollar FIG issuance broke records for July as banks dominated the calendar.

Credit default swaps referencing Brazil hit their widest levels of the year this week, with the continuing crash in commodities weighing heavily on those names most exposed and adding to a raft of other woes for the country.

US Treasury markets weakened from Wednesday, continuing a pullback that preceded a Federal Open Market Committee announcement but with the yield curve flattening further on Thursday amid a mixed response to strong GDP data.