GlobalCapital Leader

• The cost of a conscience

  A few brave souls at supranational institutions spoke out this week in favour of pricing green bonds inside vanilla deals — and rightly so. Investors’ conscience salving shouldn’t be free.

  • 26 Apr 2018

• Sewing stitches up DB's US ops

  GlobalCapital met a senior banker at a rival firm this week, who, when asked what he’d do as chief executive of Deutsche Bank, mimed placing a gun to his temple. Chief executive Christian Sewing has been in the job less than a month, and has opted to turn his gun on the bank’s US business instead.

  • 26 Apr 2018

• You can't just recycle if you believe in ESG

  Two pieces of news this week highlight how environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing is conquering the capital markets. But both carry a risk of intellectual laziness.

  • 19 Apr 2018

• Libor needs a revival, not a funeral

  The derivatives industry is engaging with efforts to create credible alternative reference rates to Libor, but three years is too little time to achieve this and more attention needs to focus on the existing benchmark itself.

  • 19 Apr 2018

• Nowotny's Cassandraic warnings

  Ewald Nowotny, governor of the Bank of Austria, has long been counted as having one of the more hawk-like squawks among members of the European Central Bank's governing council. But even he caused a shock this week with his discussion of impending rate hikes.

  • 12 Apr 2018

• Line between Russian business and Putin has been erased

  In the past, some investors were able to draw a line dividing the Russian businesses in which they parked their cash from Vladimir Putin’s government, despite what some have called a “feudal” hierarchy in the country. Last week’s US sanctions obliterated that line.

  • 12 Apr 2018

• Stop looking at our NIPs

  On the rare occasion people complain about our bond deal stories, they quite often say the story didn’t tell them what the new issue premium was. People want to know whether the issuer paid 5bp, 10bp or 25bp. They want a precise measure, and they want to know as soon as the deal was priced. But should they care?

  • 05 Apr 2018

• Fear, not confidence, is driving the EM bond rush

  Spring is here, the sun is (sort of) shining and emerging markets bond bankers are frolicking among the mandates. That means we’re in a bull market, right? Wrong.

  • 04 Apr 2018

• Russia shows the gap in ethical investment

  Russian borrowers seem to have no trouble accessing capital markets, despite sanctions and international condemnation for the Russian government's alleged poisoning of the spy, Sergei Skripal, in the UK. But that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Despite the lip service paid to the idea of responsible investment, most investors are not so choosy.

  • 28 Mar 2018

• Should two become one?

  Monopolies can be bad but not always in market infrastructure. Want to clear interest rate swaps? Do it at LCH. Want to trade UK equities? You’ll want access to LSE. These institutions have pricing power but their network effects make markets function better.

  • 28 Mar 2018

GlobalCapital Leader archive