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GlobalCapital is delighted to announce the winners of The Cover Awards 2016 to mark the successes of those in the covered bond market over the last year. The awards were presented in Düsseldorf last week at the Euromoney/ECBC Covered Bond Congress. Congratulations to all the winners, commiserations to the runners-up and thanks to all who took part.

Pricing is growing tight in the European leveraged loan market — very tight. Investors are moaning, but they will receive little sympathy from buyers of other asset classes.

The grins on the faces of Werner Baumann and Hugh Grant, chief executives of Bayer and Monsanto, look genuine enough. The deal they have struck could catapult Baumann to head of the world’s leading agribusiness company and net Grant a reported $226m.

Credit risk has awakened from its summer slumber over the last couple of days with the CDX IG and iTraxx main index now trading 8% and 11% higher than their close on Thursday. While it’s still too early to see whether this latest surge is a passing event or a longer lasting trend, both indices are still below their 12 month averages and now trade roughly 40% off the highs set earlier in the year.

A few months ago a banker I know from back in the day decided to brave a category 8 typhoon for a free drink in Wan Chai. The storm had nothing on this week’s super typhoon, but it was a tad rainy.

Bund yields are close to their highest point since the Brexit vote on June 23. It didn’t take much to push them out and it likely won’t last long, but SSA borrowers need to grab their chance to fund in maturities that don’t get much action these days.

The US Commodity Trading Futures Commission's split over whether to accept Japan's uncleared margin rules as equivalent to the US was not an ideal outcome. But the decision, however contentious, is a pragmatic step which will motivate further convergence between regulatory regimes.

Even if the European private placement market develops its own version of the USA’s NAIC ratings, that will not make tougher credits more digestible to institutional investors. But creating a Capital Markets Union that funds Europe’s growth has to channel funds to riskier borrowers, and for that, investors must do their own credit work.

The prospect of the first international bank capital trade from India is closer with State Bank of India on the road this week for a dollar-denominated additional tier one. While it has picked a good window, it needs to get the pricing right or risk derailing the rest of the market.

When the Bank of England published the list of bonds it could buy under its new corporate bond purchasing scheme, set to run from the beginning of October, it only underlined how poorly suited the sterling corporate capital market is for extraordinary monetary policy.

The last round of IMF lending to developed market countries (before the European sovereign crisis) was 40 years ago this autumn — when Britain was locked out of the capital markets and had to go ‘cap in hand’ to the Fund.

Last week the market gathered for one of the biggest events of the year: the Loan Market Association conference, and this year’s event was all the more special for being the shindig's 20th anniversary. While many attendees were brimming with enthusiasm for the big day there were, as always, a few renegades lurking in the background.