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Veteran equity analyst and forensic accountant Steve Clapham believes it is stories that drive investment decisions and seldom cold analysis of financial accounts. But he believes it is hard to find a company which isn’t engaged in some level of financial wrongdoing and argues that auditors are blind to it, wilfully or otherwise.

Remember Algomi? It's a fintech for bond trading that was bought by interdealer broker BGC Partners earlier this year.

In this round-up, the official manufacturing and services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes reach multi-year highs, the bourses in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Shenzhen add pre-revenue biotech companies listed in Hong Kong as well as Star market shares to the Stock Connect programme, and four more Chinese companies will be added to a US list of firms with alleged military ties.

This week in Keeping Tabs: a proposal to replace green bonds with certificates, the dramatic consequences of low rates, and a different side to viruses.

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.