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Inter-American Development Bank’s largest ever benchmark achieved the highest scores of the week on BondMarker. Read on to see which other issuers found favour with our voters — and which were less popular.

The Chinese securities watchdog names the first company to take part in the H-share convertibility experiment, Z-Ben Advisors says UBS is the best international asset manager in the onshore market, and the US and China may meet to resolve trade dispute.

China’s FX watchdog indicates that new quotas will be granted for two outbound investment schemes, the country’s economic planner prepares to roll out new negative investment lists, and Citi partners with Bank of China and China Merchants Bank to finance Belt and Road projects.

Two pieces of news this week highlight how environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing is conquering the capital markets. But both carry a risk of intellectual laziness.

The markets are so busy at the moment you can’t catch a break. That could be a good or bad thing, depending on who you ask, but bankers can always be relied on to find creative ways to cope.

The Trump administration’s decision not to announce new sanctions against Russia on Monday is unlikely to be the end of the sanctions saga, with designations having been proven to be the US's most effective weapon against Russia.

The US Treasury’s targeting of Rusal in its latest round of sanctions was far from the random hit that investors are claiming. The US has demonstrated its power over the dollar-based financial system — and it has no need to do further damage.

A paper by the parliamentary group of the CDU/CSU, the leading bloc in Germany’s government, has said that fund distribution from a proposed European Monetary Fund should be controlled by the eurozone’s national parliaments. Such a measure would all but nullify the point of creating the EMF — and be a dire signal for hopes of further eurozone integration.

GlobalCapital presents an overview of some of the SSA bond markets' most frequent issuers’ BondMarker scores in the first quarter of this year.

Not a day goes by without some analyst, regulator or senior exchange executive weighing in on where the clearing of euro swaps should reside post-Brexit.

China plans to turn Hainan into its latest trade laboratory, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warns countries joining the Belt and Road Initiative against accumulating excessive debt, and the securities watchdog says it will allow international participants to trade onshore iron ore futures by early May.

Chinese president Xi Jinping delivered the message everybody wanted to hear: despite the trade spat with the US, China will keep opening up its markets to foreign firms. But the speech was light on substance. The remarks feel like more of China’s vintage ‘stall and delay’ strategy rather than the much-touted ‘new era’. That could backfire, especially since Donald Trump seems hell-bent on making his aggressive trade policy towards China a reality.