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A Norwegian trader lost millions on Wednesday in a bad bet on the German and Nordic power markets, putting other members of Nasdaq Clearing on the hook for €107m in losses. The clearing house withstood the test to its capital buffers, but Nasdaq must be clear about what went wrong and what steps need to be taken to maintain confidence in its systems.

As an old-school, retired banker, I never had to face too much pressure from technology or compliance, both of which seem to be taking over the lives of young bankers.

Emerging market investors are on edge, and rightfully so, as Turkey, Argentina and South Africa face up to serious economic problems. In Asia, that has triggered outflows — and risk aversion — from Indonesia, which is in a much stronger shape than its peers. But the volatility presents an opportune time to scrutinise the south-east Asian country closely.

In this round-up, the White House administration is lining up tariffs covering the entirety of Chinese imports, the People’s Bank of China further relaxes cross-border renminbi trading rules, and Bond Connect’s trading platform Tradeweb goes live with block trading.

Imagining capital markets and investment banking in 2018 without the global financial crisis is a big leap. The chaos and turmoil of 2008 deeply scarred traders, bankers and regulators and defined the intellectual imperatives for the changes that followed — the wholesale revamp of prudential and markets regulation, the bailouts, the reorganisations, the new monetary tools and new ways of seeing the world. But the past 10 years haven’t all been about the crisis.

A reliable way to settle fiat currency transactions on blockchain is the biggest obstacle holding back the financial services industry from realising the benefits of blockchain. More and more organisations are coming up with solutions, so where are the banks?

The Catalan Treasury has dropped S&P as a ratings agency, citing cost savings — after all, it had four ratings (now three) when all it needed from a regulatory point of view was two. But S&P’s rating was the worst of those four, suggesting that ratings shopping — or in this case, ratings saving — is still a problem in the bond markets.

The first busy week for benchmarks after the summer break returned a slew of solid scores for borrowers, with Finland’s 10 year euro deal the pick of the bunch.

GlobalCapital Asia is pleased to invite pitches for our annual capital markets and investment banking awards, rewarding the most impressive transactions and investment banks of 2018.

China lays out even more ambitious plans for lending, trading and investment in Africa at a summit in Beijing this week, the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong (AmCham HK) makes political and economic agenda recommendations to the city’s government, and Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing asks market participants to be ready for the implementation of investor ID on the Stock Connect.

Foreign asset managers are still largely undecided on their China strategy, A-shares won the most emerging markets inflows last month, and the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges complete the acquisition of Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE).

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. For hardcore blockchain enthusiasts there is no end to the list of things that can be tokenised, although capital markets bankers might feel the process is less revolutionary than the techies seem to think.