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Valentine’s Day celebrations may be upon us, but the onshore RMB is not feeling much love, as the fix and spot rates against the dollar start on a weak note. In other news, FX spending by PBoC grew by over $100bn in 2016 and the Hong Kong stock market is soaring on the back of heightened inflows from Mainland investors.

In this round-up, the offshore RMB (CNH) nearly eliminates its spread with the onshore RMB, a Standard Chartered index on RMB internationalisation ends 2016 poorly, and the Hong Kong Exchange (HKEX) sees new records set in RMB futures contracts in January. Plus, a recap of our stories.

Forget looking to the periphery for the high beta names in the eurozone, the drivers pushing countries to the outlier positions on the volatility charts are no longer economic but political.

See how market participants rated Ontario's $2.5bn five year and FADE's €1bn March 2022 bond.

An old chum of mine decided to host a round of poker for his banker colleagues in his apartment last week, deciding to ring in the New Year with a spot of gambling.

GlobalCapital revealed the winners of its Syndicated Loan, Leveraged Finance and Private Placement Awards 2016 at its 14th Annual Loans Dinner on February 8.

If you were a bank chief executive, and your major competitors were signing $7bn legal settlements and asking investors for €13bn to burn on non-performing loans, you might think you deserved a breather. Apparently, you would be wrong.

At 8:15pm on November 8, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi stunned the country by announcing in an unscheduled television broadcast that at midnight Rs500 ($7.50) and Rs1,000 ($15) banknotes would be “demonetised”.

The rise of populism in Europe has claimed its first capital markets victims. Brace yourself for more.

Two Russian corporate deals in as many weeks have been stuffed down investors’ throats. Both were deemed tight, but Rusal, the first, sold off and is yet to recover to par. Russian issuers are famously price-driven, and the deals prompted complaints — but market dynamics mean that tight pricing is here to stay.

Now there’s a chance that the marginalised and downtrodden voters of rust belt America will get what they really want — a wholesale dismantling of the post-crisis banking regulation — the finance industry must ask itself if that’s what it really wants.

India is aiming for a record Rp725bn ($10.8bn) in divestment proceeds in the new financial year starting April. But it is no secret that these are targets the government is unlikely to meet, with the country having consistently over promised and under delivered. Ambition is admirable, but it is time the government got realistic.