GlobalCapital Leader

• A more fiendish problem than Libor

  With just two years to go until the Financial Conduct Authority relinquishes its control of Libor, the road to creating robust alternatives is still under construction.

  • 14 Nov 2019

• Green fashion victims

  It has been another week of firsts in the still nascent sustainability-linked financing world, but some of the targets lenders are agreeing with their borrowers for cheaper loans seem to have little to do with sustainability.

  • 14 Nov 2019

• ESG ratings belong on every term sheet

  KfW’s inclusion of ESG ratings in a term sheet might seem a superficial step — just one more disclosure of another piece of publicly available data — but it is a step towards a more sensible system of socially responsible investment.

  • 07 Nov 2019

• Banking Union: one step forward, one step back

  Olaf Scholz, Germany’s finance minister, was playing all of the right notes in his ode to the Banking Union this week. It is a shame they are still not in the right order.

  • 07 Nov 2019

• The cost of Draghi’s great experiment

  How will Mario Draghi be remembered? As the bazooka-toting president of the European Central Bank who vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to save the euro, dragging the eurozone through the sovereign debt crisis? Perhaps, but his monetary policy experiment could yet have a dreadful cost that will not be counted for many years.

  • 31 Oct 2019

• IPOs need fresh blood, new approach

  Europe’s IPO market is not broken — deals get done and in some years activity is quite brisk — but it has little to be proud of. The failure rate of deals this year has been stark and the market needs to adapt.

  • 31 Oct 2019

• UK local authorities: prepare for a shock

  A UK government body providing cheap debt to local authorities increases its lending margins, so in step nimble institutional investors to capture a slice of a new asset class. It sounds poetically simple. The reality will be more prosaic.

  • 24 Oct 2019

• EDDI: harmonisation or fragmentation?

  One of the main aims of the European Distribution of Debt Instruments Initiative (EDDI) is to achieve greater harmonisation across eurozone bond markets. But if there is no incentive to use it, EDDI will become just another platform.

  • 24 Oct 2019

• Make hay while positive yields shine

  The recent bond market sell-off has provided an opportune window for issuers to bring positive yielding deals, boosting demand for SSAs and covered bonds. It’s difficult to imagine this move will prove anything other than temporary, suggesting hesitant issuers should seize the opportunity before it disappears.

  • 17 Oct 2019

• The Old Lady needs to lead on Libor

  The Bank of England should extend Libor beyond its set date of 2021 — or risk financial institutions setting their own rules.

  • 17 Oct 2019

GlobalCapital Leader archive