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Social distancing, wearing masks in public, bars and restaurants shutting down en masse: the coronavirus is a gift to those trying to avoid people.

Equity capital markets are preparing for a busy autumn, with companies looking to raise cash to survive and thrive through the Covid-19 pandemic. But the window for raking in money may well be small, with a number of factors, of which a rising infection rate is only one, threatening turbulence for some time to come.

Less than a year ago, international investor optimism about Ukraine was high but the journey to western style reform since then has shown just how hard a road it can be to travel.

The auditor for digital bank Monzo warned that a slower than expected recovery could lead it to breach its capital requirements, even though at the end of February it had a much better capital ratio than traditional banks. So what’s going on? GlobalCapital wonders if the risk is more about investors’ appetite to continue funding an unprofitable business than the bank breaching the requirements in the next few months.

The refurbishment of existing housing stock promises to deliver big strides in cutting global carbon emissions and will provide issuers with a large new stream of green collateral to issue green covered bonds.

China’s hands-on approach into investigating Luckin Coffee signals that the regulators are serious about cracking down on financial crimes by corporations. But the full extent of their commitment will only be revealed by how they tackle similar problems in the future.

Just a few few votes separate the leading contenders in some of the categories in GlobalCapital’s Covered Bond Awards 2020 survey and, with the outcome uncertain, market participants that have not voted yet are encouraged to do so soon.

The Vanguard Group, the US asset manager which pioneered low cost, index-tracking investment, has sold $3bn worth of private placements. According to GlobalCapital data, this deal is the largest ever recorded in the US private placement market.

In this round-up, Chinese financial institutions are given another year to comply with new asset management rules due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Luckin Coffee will be punished by the Ministry of Finance for inflating its sales figures, and Ant Group faces a potential antitrust probe that could derail its upcoming jumbo IPO.

Each week Keeping Tabs beings you the most interesting and entertaining reading from around the web that we have uncovered. This week, the perils of the EU recovery fund through the lens of the subject of Broadway's hottest show, a menacing whiteness of swans and a grim view of Hong Kong's future in finance.

In this round-up, China emphasises proactive fiscal policies and flexible monetary policies, Hong Kong disqualifies a dozen pro-democracy candidates from the upcoming legislative council election and the Ministry of Finance tells local governments to use up their special-purpose bond quotas by October.

In this round-up, China’s July Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) numbers indicate recovery, Chinese video-sharing company TikTok is under a US national security review and Hong Kong-listed CanSino Biologics is set for a secondary listing on Shanghai’s Star board.