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Over my many years in Hong Kong, I have seen a lot. I've watched the city go from being a British colony to become part of China. I've seen a real estate boom and luxury shopping replace old local stores. I've seen protests and political turmoil. But all that has little prepared me for what has happened here this week.

Foreign banks hoping to break into China’s capital markets will have an open invitation at the end of next year, when final restrictions on their ownership of securities houses are removed. They will have some small successes with secondary trading but muscling in on primary capital markets will prove expensive ─ and risky.

Green quantitative easing is having a moment. As the European Central Bank restarts the ordinary brown kind of money printing, buying corporate and public sector bonds, a broad range of commentators, from left wing activists to BlackRock’s head of official institutions, argue that central banks ought to put their balance sheet power in play to green the world. But turning to the central banks is a counsel of despair. The technocrats should be a last resort; it is politicians who should be in the vanguard.

Tuesday might be a day to spare a thought for any investor long Netflix as Disney launches is streaming service, Disney +. But the flotation of UK visual effects firm DNEG might just give them a way to profit from the coming war between the big streamers.

In this round-up, MSCI is set to give a boost to China A-shares again at the end of the month, CPI inflation accelerated to the fastest pace in seven years and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has decided to allow unprofitable companies to list on the ChiNext board.

In this round-up, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) sold Rmb30bn ($4.3bn) of central bank bills in Hong Kong, China’s foreign reserves grew slightly and the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) took an important step to improving foreign participation in its Star market.

In this round-up, China hinted at de-escalating tariffs as phase-one trade deal nears, Chinese president Xi Jinping assured foreign investors of the country’s determination to open up and the Financial Stability and Development Committee (FSDC) met to discuss banks’ capital needs.

KfW’s inclusion of ESG ratings in a term sheet might seem a superficial step — just one more disclosure of another piece of publicly available data — but it is a step towards a more sensible system of socially responsible investment.

What is Ellen DeGeneres up to nowadays? Taipan wouldn't usually care much about the answer to this question but he found out this week while calling a loans banker.

The launch of Saudi Aramco’s IPO on Sunday will begin a fortnight of feverish debates and valuation discussions among investors and banks. But Aramco is not just an investment in an oil company: it is an invitation to be a junior investor in the state of Saudi Arabia — with all the dangers and upside that entails.

Chinese borrowers that have previously ignored the euro bond market should reconsider. Recent deals show there are plenty of reasons for issuers to tap the European investor base.

Do responsible investing, ESG and sustainable finance mean anything? If so, they must mean investors cannot buy Saudi Aramco’s IPO. When the world is desperately trying to cut carbon emissions, ploughing billions into a newly listed oil company is the definition of a backward step.