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Strength across the board, top positions in rates and FX and smart strategic decisions around the structure of its business mean that Bank of America Merrill Lynch is GlobalCapital’s Global Derivatives House of the Year for 2019. The bank also picked up the Interest Rate Derivatives House of the Year and FX Derivatives House of the Year awards.

In less than a decade, Myanmar has gone from a mysterious country shut off from the outside world to a burgeoning frontier market with plenty of investment opportunities. The government has made tremendous strides, opening up to outside money. But for Myanmar to become a real success story, it needs to fully welcome foreign capital.

GlobalCapital is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Global Derivatives Awards. The winners were unveiled at a gala dinner at the Banking Hall in London on Wednesday night.

Two massive sovereign bond issues on Monday threatened to upset the generally bullish market for new debt raising from the CEEMEA region. Abu Dhabi raised $10bn and South Africa $5bn, stoking fears of oversupply when the bonds traded weakly in the secondary market.

Investors and banks are pledging right, left and centre to fight climate change. Good for them — but the economy must get to carbon neutrality as soon as possible. This cannot be done until banks and funds refuse to fund more fossil fuels.

Metro Bank’s failed senior non-preferred bond is rated BB+, squarely in high yield territory. But while corporates with this rating print at ever tighter yields, Metro couldn’t get its deal away even at 7.5%. Nobody expects the rating agencies to be in line with the market, but sometimes the gulf is yawningly wide.

In this round-up, the US exempted 400 Chinese goods from import tariffs while China cancelled trips to US farms, two top Chinese regulators jointly addressed funding difficulties facing smaller corporations and custom authorities detained a FedEx pilot on suspicion of carrying ammunition.

Challenges are rife across the banking industry in the Gulf. As banks struggle to keep up with technological innovation and the growth of foreign competition, domestic players told GlobalCapital what needs to be done to combat these existential threats.

In this round-up, deputy-level trade negotiators from China and the US have met, the People’s Bank of China left the medium-term lending facility rate unchanged and the Shanghai government issued more measures to attract foreign investment.

Please see below.

In this round-up, the gap between Japan's and China’s holdings of US Treasuries widened, Moody’s downgraded Hong Kong's outlook and Bank of China Manila branch gained renminbi clearing bank status.

Although the European Central Bank (ECB) hasn’t said yet how it intends to split buying across the €20bn of net asset purchases that it plans on making each month, it is likely covered bonds will form an integral part. And if covered bonds tighten, that probably means much else will be dragged along for the ride.