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UBS and two others announce China JV plans, the domestic iron ore futures contract opens to foreign traders, and Shanghai and Shenzhen get approval for their Dhaka exchange acquisition plans.

Infrastructure debt is a favoured corner of the capital markets for policymakers and investors alike. But nowhere is immune from plentiful liquidity in fixed income, and yields have been squeezed. Investors are getting paid less and less for the illiquidity and complexity of the asset class — so they have had to go looking further afield. Owen Sanderson reports.

New investors are pouring into direct lending and they are scrapping for bigger ticket sizes. Competition has grown quickly, allowing deals of increased complexity and variety to get done. But with everyone chasing the same deals, some have opted to compromise on credit quality. Can the industry weather a change in the credit cycle when it inevitably arrives? Nell Mackenzie reports.

Europe, unlike the US, has a market for unrated public bonds. This has been one reason why Europe’s private placement market has not grown as large as that in the US. In good times issuers find it a valid alternative to getting a rating, however, as tougher conditions return, the pendulum may be swinging the other way. Nigel Owen reports.

The market for corporate MTNs has come under pressure from monetary policy, regulation and a proliferation of alternative products. Dealers have been forced to adapt to new conditions to find ways to demonstrate value, but fresh challenges are approaching. Lewis McLellan reports.

European issuers are finding ever greater depths of liquidity in the private debt market with the Euro PP, Schuldschein and US PP markets all offering different options. GlobalCapital brought together a number of bankers, investors and issuers in London in mid-March to discuss the state of the markets and how they see them developing.

The Euro private placement market has had to fight competition on all sides, and quantitative easing has helped to make that more intense, with banks, the Schuldschein market and public bonds offering very cheap funding. Prospects of the cheap money tide ebbing are raising spirits. But as Silas Brown reports, the idea of one Euro PP market covering Europe is fading.

Paris is a centre for continental European private debt activity that goes on outside the German Schuldschein and US private placement markets, which are both clearly defined by their legal documents.

Welcome to ByteMe, GlobalCapital’s new column, providing an informed, critical and irreverent take on the newest and biggest issues in technology — specifically the bits of it involved in moving money around.

The central banks aren’t the only 800lb gorillas in the bond market. How tech companies choose to liquidate their investments and hand cash back to shareholders could drive the outlook for bonds just as much as monetary policy.

As more cash is directed into the US private placement market, its attractiveness as a venue for more and larger deals will continue to increase. But even as it sets new issuance records, the question facing investors remains the same as ever — where can more deals be found? Richard Metcalf reports.

The US private placement market is the largest, most established private debt market in the world. It has huge international appeal, attracting issuers from around the globe who enjoy the ever evolving features the market offers and the fact that it seems to ride out any periods of weakness of other global markets. Nigel Owen reports.