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The European Central Bank's decision to embrace sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs) as collateral and for its asset purchase programme is a sign of what is to come.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, two relatively new supranational borrowers with a focus on the emerging markets, made a big splash in dollars this week as they continue to build out their curves. The issuers managed to achieve strong results despite facing worse volatility than expected as markets soured amid rising fears over the coronavirus pandemic.

Chinese rating agencies are facing increasing pressure, after the country’s securities association said it had found evidence of firms inflating ratings to win business. Addison Gong reports.

The green bond market was conceived on a simple plan. A new class of green bonds would finance environmental projects, standing out from the grey mass of ordinary bonds.

This week’s £1.88bn ($2.43bn) IPO of The Hut Group (THG) in London is leading to hopes that European technology firms will follow in listing on their home markets rather than in the US.

Bank of China took yet another step this week to build China’s sustainability market by selling Asia’s first blue bond to benefit ocean-related projects — opening the door for similar deals from the region. Morgan Davis reports.

European policymakers may decide to ramp up efforts to retain control of capital markets, amid rising Brexit tensions, the US-China dispute and the need to recover economic growth.

The Indonesian government’s move to shut down a committee exclusively focused on approving offshore loans from borrowers is getting its first test, as Pertamina lines up a $3bn deal for the acquisition of energy assets. Despite the change coming into effect about two months ago, there is still uncertainty around how the new process will work, writes Pan Yue.

Ryanair left parts of the corporate bond market ‘gobsmacked’ on Tuesday, as the first benchmark-sized new issue from an airline since lockdowns from Covid-19 battered the sector managed to reprice the issuer’s curve.

Royal Schiphol, the Dutch airport operator, brought a dual tranche conventional and green bond with a small to flat new issue premium on Tuesday. The issuer opted to make the longer 12 year tranche green, which bankers say is indicative of lengthening maturities in the typically mid-tenor corporate green bond market.

Fast food franchise operator Yum China Holdings is cooking a multi-billion-dollar secondary offering in Hong Kong. It is the latest deal in a growing trend that bankers expect will bring more US-listed Chinese companies to the exchange by the the end of 2020, writes Jonathan Breen.

Luxembourg became the first European sovereign to publish a sustainability bond framework this week, breaking the pattern, to which Germany became a notable addition on Wednesday, of governments printing green deals. But sustainability bonds make much more sense for countries large and small.