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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.

Asian loans bankers are calling for relaxed restrictions on green and sustainability-linked loans, hoping for more business opportunities from the sector. But this approach could harm the development of the market in the long-term.

Eye-watering bond yields on Argentina’s recently restructured sovereign bonds indicate that investors have little faith in its economic plans. That will make it hard for issuers and investors to see eye-to-eye in the wave of provincial debt restructuring talks that has followed the sovereign's deal with bondholders.

An ESG think tank believes that the European Central Bank should drop Alberta’s euro bonds from its list of eligible marketable assets, as a punishment for its support for polluting industries. But while it is a laudable aim, it is not practicable.

The coronavirus pandemic has subjected the European leveraged loan market, where ‘cov-lite’ documents reign supreme, to a brutal test. The early results are positive.

Ronald Hinterkircher, who is retiring from the Swiss franc bond market after a 40 year career, has told GlobalCapital that digitalisation and the possible removal of the withholding tax for foreign investors could change the market over the next few years. But with the European Central Bank propping up the euro bond market, arbitrage opportunities for international companies in Swiss francs are vanishingly slim.

UBS enjoyed a successful third quarter for debt capital markets, its results last week showed, as it racked up 63% more in revenue than in the third quarter of 2019, according to GlobalCapital's estimate.

This week in Keeping Tabs: how the European Central Bank could decarbonise its corporate bond book, how digital banks would suffer if the Bank of England goes negative, and what UK financial services policy could look like after Brexit.

In this round-up, China’s fiscal revenue growth turns positive in the third quarter, Sweden becomes the latest to ban Huawei Technologies from its 5G plan, and S&P Global Ratings’ onshore unit secures a licence to rate domestic bonds in the exchange market.