Free content

While all eyes are on China and turmoil in the mainland equity markets, our columnist turns his gaze to Indonesia where once again the government is attempting to privatise state-owned companies.

The Financial Stability Board’s total loss absorbing capacity (TLAC) rules have been the lynchpin of the global effort to end ‘too big to fail’. Finalised in November, they will require global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) to have issued equivalent to 16% of their risk weighted assets in loss absorbing debt by 2019, rising to 18% by 2022.

Bank restructurings come in two flavours — the kind where the business stays pretty much the same, and the kind where it doesn’t. 2015 was the year of the latter, as new chief executives, new business models and a pervasive sense of existential doubt hung over investment banking. Owen Sanderson reports

Much rulemaking was published in 2015, but that doesn’t mean bankers are any clearer on what it means for their businesses. And as they wade through the thousands of pages of finalised regulation, the banking industry is highly likely to be faced with additional rules — and challenges —in 2016. Graham Bippart reports.

Blockchain, the technology underlying bitcoin, is coming to a back office, and clearing house, and bank, and front office near you. Instead of one authority keeping records, everyone will. That’s the idea, anyway, of a wave of start-ups rushing to build workable applications. How will clarity emerge from this ferment, and just how will it change the business of capital markets? Jon Hay reports.

Worries about bond market liquidity went from specialist interest to global best-seller in 2015. The Bank of England and the Federal Reserve published extensively on liquidity problems in bonds; European politicians lost their appetite for regulation, fearful about doing further damage to the frail but crucial animal spirits of the bond markets. But the last year saw precious little done to solve the problem. Owen Sanderson asks whether 2016 will be better.

Enormous effort has gone into improving banks’ public images with sustainability drives, charity giving and community involvement. Much of this is sincere, but the true tests come in banks’ real financing business — can they put ethics before profit? John M Anderson reports.

It’s been a tough eight years for banks — and for bankers — and the perception of finance as a career has changed in the public mind. But banks aren’t losing out in the race to hire young bright graduates, as much as the career expectations of those graduates are changing. Banks need to keep up with the times if they want to compete, writes Graham Bippart.

The fleeting occasions in 2015 where public sector borrowers brought similar deals on the same day and created a jam in the market could become a more common occurrence in 2016, as issuers forego the 2015 strategy of spreading fundraising throughout the year and issuance windows narrow. Craig McGlashan reports.

The European corporate bond market is preparing for another dose of quantitative easing this year and with the US Federal Reserve having finally pressed the rate button, Ross Lancaster explores what the side effects of central bank policy divergence will be.

While the last few years have been all about the European high yield bond market rapidly developing into a dependable financing source for private equity sponsors, 2015 saw the loan market fight back. But as Max Bower and Victor Jimenez point out, it has done so at a time when LBO sponsors face increasing competition from IPOs and trade buyers.

GlobalCapital asked loan market participants for their votes for the Syndicated Loan, Leveraged Finance and Private Placement Awards 2016, in November.