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In this round-up, China’s banking and insurance regulator decides to allow beleaguered Baoshang Bank to go bankrupt, Hong Kong’s chief executive says pre-profit biotech stocks and some Star companies will be added to the Stock Connect programme, and India moves to ban another 43 China-based mobile applications.

There is every reason to be sceptical of the UK’s plan for a national infrastructure bank. Infrastructure is hard to finance because governments are unreliable. Combining hard assets expected to pay back over 30 years with democratic governments that change course every few makes private investors reluctant to treat long-term infra projects as a pure matter of credit risk.

It's funny what you start to miss after nearly a year without travel.

GlobalCapital’s poll to determine our Syndicated Loan and Leveraged Finance Awards 2020 will close today. If you haven't yet voted, we would be delighted if you would take this opportunity to pick the deals and firms that have made the most difference to loan markets in 2020. We remind you that an institution cannot win a category it hasn't voted on.

Little lenders are being pushed closer to collapse in the UK by rules that were supposed to make them more resilient. The Bank of England should take note.

In this round-up, Beijing says it has suspended $2.1bn in debt payments from two dozen nations under the G20 framework, and the top Chinese financial regulators send strong signals to the onshore market in the wake of a string of domestic bond defaults.

In this round-up, the interbank bond market regulator announces stricter rules for domestic bond issuance, the investigation into firms linked to a defaulted state-owned issuer widens, and China reduces its holding of US Treasury bonds for four straight months.

By all measures, the first two transactions of the European Union’s arrival as a supersized issuer in the capital markets were tremendous successes. The order books were world beaters, the new issue premiums were tiny despite the huge deal sizes, and the secondary performance has been incredible. But while it has been plain sailing so far, there are bigger tests ahead.

Northumberland Estates, the body that manages the interests of the Duke of Northumberland, has sold £200m worth of private placements to US and UK investors, according to market sources. The borrower joins Blenheim Palace, the Duchy of Cornwall and a long list of esoteric credits to tap the private markets.

Some of us have got quite comfortable working from home — a bit too comfortable.

Sustainability-linked pricing has arrived in the equity capital markets. This is no bad thing.

Symon Drake-Brockman, the founder and managing partner of European direct lender Pemberton Asset Management, thinks that the US direct lending market has matured to such an extent that further growth is tricky, whereas Europe still has fruitful opportunities ahead.