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The Euro PP market needs to act fast to stop bank lending luring smaller companies away. But a few tweaks is all it needs.

When a company announces that it is increasing the amount paid out to shareholders, it is not typically greeted with enthusiasm by credit investors. But Glencore is no ordinary company in the credit default swap world, and its announcement on Thursday wasn’t a standard change in financial policy.

On the surface, stress tests seem arcane and disconnected from reality. Perhaps they are, but they’re an increasingly important tool for bank regulators around the world.

I’ve long been suspicious of how much time bankers these days spend on their phones, but I’ve always given them the benefit of the doubt. It’s a 24-seven world now, after all. But a recent episode made me think I may have given bankers too much credit.

The ECB’s announcement it was planning leveraged lending rules for the banks it supervises has been polarising, confusing, and often emotional. But the market will come to appreciate it in time.

PDVSA is doing itself no favours by bending the truth about its financial situation. Bondholders are under no illusions about its troubles, so the company might as well be open with them.

The European Union has allowed lobbyists to blunt the teeth of its long-awaited money market fund reform act.

The European Central Bank, European Commission and the European Banking Authority are pulling in different directions when it comes to covered bonds with extendible maturity structures. Time for a bit of harmonisation.

The quixotic quest of Minneapolis Federal Reserve president Neel Kashkari to “end too big to fail” requires nothing less than a total reordering of US bank regulation (and probably implies ditching Basel as well). But really solving the problem can’t just mean restructuring the banking system, it means nothing less changing how we think about money and debt as well.

IPOs in Hong Kong this year have been dominated by friends and family investors or throttled by cornerstone accounts. But the appearance of technology company Meitu could be the deal the market needs to attract foreign investors, so it can’t be allowed to slip into the ranks of mainland dominated deals.

The uncertainty fueled by the events of 2016 has left the markets shaken with many issuers reticent about launching new deals before the end of the year. But borrowers keen to put the year behind them should think twice about betting on 2017. With impending elections in Europe and Donald Trump’s inauguration, there is plenty that could cause markets to unravel in the first quarter.

For regulation geeks, the pace of life is accelerating with the release of a whole package of new European banking measures — and maybe a final Basel IV before year-end. But what struck GlobalCapital this week was the string of senior DCM bankers returning to the market.