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Public sector borrowers should be careful what they wish for. Those looking to follow the European Union’s lead in lowering the underwriting fees they pay to banks could cause an unwelcome distortion to their market at a time when getting funding through the door with minimal drama is perhaps more crucial than ever.

The increasing pace of technological change in the capital markets might worry some bankers who fear they’ll be replaced by algorithms and distributed ledgers, but they needn’t be concerned.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s newly unveiled Green and Sustainable Finance Grant Scheme is big on ambition but falls short on some areas that are growing in importance.

In this round-up, the China Securities Regulatory Commission plans to ask companies to include separate chapters for corporate governance as well as environmental and social responsibilities in their annual financial reports, and three Chinese telecommunications companies will be dropped from the New York Stock Exchange after an unsuccessful appeal.

In this round-up, China’s trade surplus jumps in the first four months of the year, regulators unveil details for implementing the cross-border Wealth Management Connect pilot scheme between the Mainland, Hong Kong and Macau, and Beijing decides to suspend all activity under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue.

Green covered bonds no longer have to be reinvented in the face of rising sustainability-linked issuance because banks are now safe in the knowledge that they comply with the EU’s Taxonomy of Sustainable Activities.

The Financial Conduct Authority’s plan to look at helping US-style special purpose acquisition companies list in London smacks of short-termism. Even in the US, the epicentre of the Spac craze, there is a growing clamour for the Securities and Exchange Commission to toughen listing rules.

I was talking to a few loans bankers this week and was surprised when they revealed privately that they had very little interest in social loans. That gave me an idea.

China’s latest crackdown on some of its largest internet companies should raise a critical question — who are the real beneficiaries of reining in the country’s technology titans?

A small band of committed investors in Tesco has achieved spectacular success with a shareholder motion on healthy food. This should embolden investors to hold issuers to account on a wider range of social matters — and also contains a deeper lesson about how markets bring about change.

Ares Management has raised a colossal €11bn for its new European direct lending fund, but firms whose investments hit the skids through the pandemic may not find it quite so easy.

‘Look at the issuer as a whole’ is the mantra of the corporate and supranational green bond markets, and rightly so. But we need to apply the same approach to sovereigns.