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Rentenbank impressed BondMarker’s voters with its largest ever euro benchmark: a €1.75bn five year.

The Asian bond market has had a volatile quarter, with new dollar issues struggling in primary and notes underperforming in the secondary market. It may be tempting to cut corners, but there is no room for shoddy market practices.

Are cryptocurrencies securities? If so, who can buy them? William Hinman of the Securities and Exchange Commission went some way to answering these questions last week, but why did he leave retail investors in the cold?

To help celebrate the 20th anniversary of the setting up of the UK Debt Management Office, GlobalCapital gathered together some of the UK Gilt market’s leading traders, investors and bankers, with its CEO Sir Robert Stheeman, to discuss the state of the bond markets, how they have changed since the DMO was established in April 1998 and how the government’s investor base and bond issuance are likely to evolve over the coming years.

David Kirby, senior manager at Lloyds treasury, has died from cancer, aged 32.

FX watchdog loosens its grip on capital outflows for foreign investors, securities regulator lobbies for A-shares to make up more than 0.73% of MSCI’s benchmark emerging market (EM) index, and the governor of China’s central bank hails Shanghai as the prime spot to pilot further liberalisation.

New benchmark created for interbank bonds, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) projects further inflows into China’s capital markets, and the White House is reportedly going ahead with plans to place tariffs on $50bn of Chinese imports.

When bitcoin futures were launched in December last year, there was excitement, fear and outrage all at once. Critics, including the Futures Industry Association, piled pressure on to US derivatives regulator the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission, demanding better safeguards for such products. Cheerleaders may see the asset class as a great way to earn big in markets dogged by low yields but the doubters, of which Byte Me is one, may yet be proven right.

SSA borrowers have long been used to having it their way amid the exceptional monetary easing meted out by central banks since the global financial crisis. But this week could be the moment things started swinging back in favour of investors.

Companies in both China and India have to find their way through regulatory labyrinths to gain approval to sell offshore bonds. But although both countries have overbearing, occasionally irrational, regulators, they differ in one key respect.

It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I see young minds eager to get into investment banking (they obviously have no idea what they are letting themselves in for, but still). Even so, what often takes me by surprise is how multi-talented some of them are.

The FCA’s decision to modify rules in order to allow sovereign owned companies — such as Saudi Aramco — to achieve a premium listing should be seen as just another chapter in the UK’s cosiness with the House of Saud.