Euroblog

VTB Capital has changed the date of its Russia Calling! conference, highlighting “mounting pressure from clients’ in-laws” as the reason for moving the event so that it doesn't clash with Thanksgiving in the US.

If the date of one major capital markets event in Russia is anything to go by, the locals have given up on attracting US investors all together.

Deutsche Bank gave a scare to some investors in its additional tier one bonds last week when it disclosed it expects to lose net €6.2bn, but Blog was very concerned when we took a look at the FCA’s Financial Services Register last week.

The covered bond market never looked so alive as it did on the beaches of Barcelona last week.

Blog made a useful discovery this week — getting stuck on a long car journey with one bank’s SSA team would be a terrible idea.

"Grexit", "Greferendum" — the slamming together of "Greece" and other semi-appropriates words has been the only consistent part of the debt talks between Greece and its creditors.

Never let it be said that such a serious organisation as the European Stability Mechanism would take an opportunity to include some cheeky subtext in one of its press releases, but Blog couldn’t help but feel that was exactly what it was doing as the clock ticked down to the make-or-break Greek referendum on Sunday.

It’s been a tough year in CEEMEA bonds, with volumes drooping lower than Putin’s man boobs.

You know when you know what someone means, but what they’ve actually said is gobbledygook?

HSBC global head of capital financing Spencer Lake lost no time ensuring his grasp on the International Capital Markets association when he was appointed its chair at the organisation’s annual general meeting last week.

The capital markets in Europe appear to be approaching something like the financial equivalent of the singularity, or the point in a black hole where time and space collapse into a single, one-dimensional point where all laws of physics fall apart.

Moody’s certainly seems to be doing its best to be left off Scotland’s list of approved rating agencies when that country issues its debut bond — something its government was granted powers to do last year.

When former Rabobank analyst Olly Burrows’ wife and one of their four children came home early to find a burglar trashing their upstairs bedroom, it was not funny.

One of the FIG world’s most extracurricularly active bankers was devastated last week when he found he was going to have to miss his annual trip to Cheltenham for the races because of work.

Who’s up for a little Russian oil/commodity play?

European Central Bank president Mario Draghi was worryingly late to the January press conference at which he announced the central bank would be embarking on full scale quantitative easing, but pictures released on an Italian website give clues as to why.

Confusion hit Blog Towers late last week after a press release arrived in our inbox about Macquarie arranging financing for LDC to buy the NEC Group from Birmingham City Council.

“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” wrote William Shakespeare.

Christmas : every year the season comes a little bit earlier. And though an agreeable effect of this fact is that we all get to hear the WHAM! Christmas classic “Last Christmas” endlessly churned through department store speakers until the choral phrase “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart” begins to take on gruesome surgical connotations, one of the side effects is that the holiday spirit gets….well — stretched a little thin.

No nugget of information gleaned from an emerging market banker has ever been ever more unexpected.

He might be “The Boss” to an army of fawning public sector origination bankers, but Frank Czichowski, treasurer of KfW, made no secret of his admiration for Bruce Springsteen.

In the course of our crusading financial journalising, Blog receives our fair share of odd messages from sources. One this week beat them all, however. We opened an email one morning which read simply: “Virgin, I am free.”

Blog has noted with a mixture of admiration and concern the rise in popularity of extreme adventure sports among the banking community.

As the days get shorter and the commute that little bit colder, we like to hold onto the summer spirit as long as possible — ‘keep warm and carry sunglasses’ is Blog’s personal philosophy. But it seems that the Street is taking it to the next level.