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One by one, banks are taking responsibility to help fight climate change, by setting targets to eliminate carbon emissions from their whole financing portfolios by 2050. This will not suffice. Banks must learn a new way of interacting with clients.

A proposed change to the Pfandbrief law introducing a soft bullet maturity is designed to harmonise Germany’s covered bond regime with the rest of Europe’s, as envisaged under the EU’s Covered Bond Directive. However, it could highlight the vast differences in how soft bullet covered bonds are repaid following extension triggers.

China wowed investors last week with a $6bn 144A bond amid a trade war with the US, but it missed a chance to solidify its credentials in the socially responsible bond market.

Japanese giant MUFG is freshening up its global capital markets business, with a couple of senior new hires. It has poached one of them from Deutsche Bank, some of whose alumni are corralling their efforts for a capital markets advisory business.

In this round-up, China's economic rebound strengthens in the third quarter, the country’s legislature passes a new law on export control to protect sensitive technology, and the law governing commercial banks faces major revisions.

This week Keeping Tabs brings you thoughts on the inadequacies of ESG data, the US election and why Spain is in such a bind.

In this round-up, China’s September inflation data disappoints, import volume beats expectations by a large margin, and Ant Group might be added to the trade blacklist by the US ahead of its jumbo IPO.

Despite the Eurozone covered bond market’s huge size, its inherent liquidity is dwarfed by much smaller sectors outside the trading block — effectively meaning ‘the market’ is slowly but surely becoming impotent.

Equity markets are pricing in a big win for Democrats in the US elections in November, meaning a large post-election stimulus package to help the economy through Covid-19. However, they should be wary as president Donald Trump is far from beaten.

The European Commission has unveiled bold plans to promote the renovation of existing housing stock in a bid to improve energy efficiency and so cut EU’s carbon footprint and provide a much-needed stimulus to the economy. At the same time, the European Covered Bond Council is implementing its energy efficient mortgage plan that aims to improve the supply of collateral securing green covered bond issuance.

Banks have improved their cyber security dramatically in the last few years. But their employees are still taking creative approaches to sneaking out data — for fun and profit.

The former head of global debt capital markets origination at Deutsche Bank has linked up with 40 of his former colleagues to form a capital markets advisory firm very much in the spirit of the times — as a network that operates online — as the coronavirus pandemic forces a rethink of traditional investment banking models.