Europe

President Putin may not like it but Russia needs to trade with the West. China may offer a potentially large alternative source of business but it will be a far more testing partner and both countries hold a healthy level of mistrust in each other. Meanwhile, a charm offensive in Latin America, the Middle East and elsewhere has produced only a piecemeal development strategy

Women's participation in the labour force still lags men's by 12% even in developed economies. In the MENA region it can be up to 50%. That is a wasted resource - and best practice examples show countries and companies that tackle the problem outperform

As the global financial community is braced to withstand the impact of the looming US interest rates, Indian central bank chief Raghuram Rajan tells Emerging Markets that the federal Reserve must pay attention to emerging market concerns

Yet critics say the forecast is overly optimistic, given the eurozone’s precarious recovery and slowing growth in many of the country’s key regional export markets

Economists are warning that among the major fast-growing economies, Turkey has the most to lose from the US jacking up interest rates over the coming 12 months

Sparkasse KölnBonn opened books on Tuesday on an Aaa-rated €500m no-grow 10 year mortgage backed Pfandbrief, its first deal since April 2013 and the sixth 10 year print to come out of Germany in 2014. Bankers on the deal said they could have pushed the rare name through mid-swaps but opted not to, as the issuer wanted to leave room for secondary market performance.

Austrian lender Hypo Tyrol issued its first publicly distributed deal on Wednesday, pricing a sub benchmark sized €300m public sector Pfandbrief. The transaction’s smaller than usual size meant it was not eligible for the covered bond indices, which deterred large investors. However, investors were compensated for the less liquid size with a wider than usual spread.

Jez Walsh has left Royal Bank of Scotland where he had been in charge of covered bond syndication for 15 years. His departure follows a string of high profile exits from RBS’ covered bond team including Allen Rad, Christoph Anhamm, Frank Will and Jason Wolfe.

The Swedish Covered Bond Corporation (SBAB) was set to issue a €1bn deal at a historically tight level of 1bp over mid-swaps on a comfortably oversubscribed book on Tuesday. Although the issuer has been out of the market for three years and is considered a solid credit, the deal lacked some of the sparkle of issues seen earlier this month, possibly due to its soft bullet structure.

HSH Nordbank opened books on Tuesday on an Aa3-rated €500m no-grow seven year mortgage-backed Pfandbrief, its second covered bond deal of 2014. Bankers said the level of oversubscription was further evidence of the divergence in popularity between covered bonds likely to be included in the ECB’s third covered bond purchase programme (CBPP3) and those which are likely to be outside, such as Tuesday’s other euro-denominated benchmark, from Swedish Covered Bond Corporation.

HSH Nordbank and the Swedish Covered Bond Corporation (SCBC) mandated leads for euro benchmarks that are likely to be launched on Tuesday.

DNB Boligkreditt returned to the euro covered bond market on Monday to issue its first deal of the year. The transaction looked set to price comfortably through mid-swaps, but it did not enjoy the same degree of price tension as recently issued and highly rated core covered bonds that are likely to be included in the European Central Bank’s third purchase programme (CBPP3).