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It’s a pity the irreversible damage to our world’s lungs through the wanton destruction of its rainforests does not come with the same stark health warning found on a packet of cigarettes. If it did, the world’s largest banks and asset managers might be shamed into giving up their dirty habit.

Quadgas, a gas asset and infrastructure investment consortium that sits above UK utility Cadent Gas, has sold $600m-equivalent of US private placements, in the first UK utility deal for more than six months.

Ask any debt banker in Asia about 'the Chinese bid' and they will tell you how dramatically demand from the country has transformed the dollar bond market. But a handful of recent deals from the country’s local government financing vehicles should give borrowers pause. This source of demand cannot be taken for granted.

Finding it hard to keep up with advances in technology these days? Citi's got just the person for you.

In this round-up, the Purchasing Managers’ Index reading for October points to steady recovery momentum for the Chinese economy, profitability improves at the country’s largest state-owned lenders, and Hong Kong seeks help from the World Trade Organization to ban the US’s demand for its exports to be labelled ‘made in China’.

This week in Keeping Tabs: the role of debt management offices in green policy, and an update on EU countries' use of capital markets.

In this round-up, the Chinese Communist Party has set goals for the country’s development over the next five years, regulators are ready to streamline the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and some big property developers have been asked for their monthly financial data.

Take advantage of low borrowing rates to enact ambitious social programmes. That is economists' message to governments in the developed world right now. The message could also apply elsewhere.

Capital markets players have a variety of stances on the forthcoming US presidential election. A survey by UBS this week found 51% of wealthy US investors wanted Joe Biden to win, while 55% of business owners favoured Donald Trump.

The lockdown has changed life for all of us in ways large and small. I miss my monthly trips to the beach in Thailand, lazing around in a plush hotel with a Mai Tai in my hand and a Tai Tai nowhere in sight. Tai Tai is my dear wife, although in this case the relevant definition of the word ‘dear’ is ‘expensive’. She tells me she misses the long dinners with the girls. Others reminisce about the hustle and bustle of business travel.

A large number of issuers from Asia, the majority Chinese, tapped bond investors on Wednesday for fresh funds.

GlobalCapital has argued that it is not the ECB’s job to exclude individual borrowers’ bonds from its list of repo-eligible securities on environmental grounds, in response to our call for the Province of Alberta’s debt to be removed from its list of eligible marketable assets (EMA). We maintain that the ECB has plenty of justification to exclude this borrower.