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Fear of US sanctions kept Russian borrowers out of the market for much of 2018. Now they’re coming back, and investors would be well advised to get involved.

This year’s bull market in credit and equities stems from central banks trying to soften the blow of a downturn, rather than from expectations of actual growth. This irony cannot last, for reasons of economics, policy and politics.

The potential merger of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank has been repeatedly panned since it was first floated, with good reason. But at the level of the whole German banking system, there is a certain logic to it.

Asia is gunning to be the world leader of green bond issuance but the market needs a spark to ignite new issuance. Sovereign green bonds will be the key to the continent’s growth in this sector.

South Korea’s Homeplus Stores whipped the market up into a state of excitement over the last month as it lined up a real estate investment trust (Reit) the likes of which the country had never seen. Even more tantalising was the pipeline of large companies considering Reits of their own if Homeplus's offering went well. But it aimed too high and had to pull the deal, wrecking the party before it started.

In this round-up, trade talks between the United States and China continued, the Foreign Investment Law was passed by the National People’s Congress and the US urged Germany to ban Huawei

One of the fondest hopes of the cryptocurrency true believers looks set to come true this year. Real decentralised value transfer systems could be on their way both to retail and institutional banking. But, in a cruelly ironic twist, they will be delivered by the blackest names in individual privacy and financial libertarianism.

Ukraine drew attention for all the wrong reasons this week, tapping a November 2028 line for $350m, allegedly well below the market value.

The green bond market is still simply too small for its investors to be discerning.

Back in my working days, I used to regularly be peeved by journalists calling me looking for juicy bits of news. Oh, the excuses I used to come up with to get off the phone with them!

A vote to leave the EU has left the population of the UK divided. The country’s banking sector will increasingly come to share in this division, with the largest financial institutions able to muddle on in capital markets even as smaller lenders find themselves beholden to events in domestic politics.

Time is running out for Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Christopher Giancarlo to pass his reforms of US swap execution facilities (SEFs) and few market participants seem to think that his proposals will pass in their entirety. But it is strange to expect regulators to stamp legacy policies on to their terms in the manner of a politician or CEO.