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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.

The US Department of Labour (DoL) has proposed what it characterises as a reiteration of what has always been required of retirement fiduciaries — that they act in the best interest of their beneficiaries — urging them to disregard ESG considerations in investment decisions. In doing so, it appears not to have noticed the last decade in financial markets, which has shown that ESG investing is very much in investors’ interests.

Now is not the ideal time to be a port operator. International Container Terminal Services has faced a tough year, as the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical turmoil take a toll on global trade. But the Philippine company, which develops and operates container ports and terminals, moved quickly in response to the crisis in early 2020, boosting its liquidity and freezing its capital expenditure. ICTSI followed with two successful dollar bond sales in June and July.

American expats have long looked at their low-tax paying peers with envy. While Englishmen, Frenchmen and others in Hong Kong have enjoyed a 17% maximum tax rate, those born in the US are also forced to pay taxes in their country of birth, even if they’ve been absent for decades.