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Naftogaz did itself few favours this week with its farcical approach to repaying holders of its $1.6bn Eurobond. When Ukraine’s state owned oil and gas company missed its bond payment on September 30, it risked more than a few irate investors.

Harmonising covered bond standards tends to make eyes glaze over. The myriad different regimes and labyrinth of technicalities involved, can seem baffling and trivial. But it would be a mistake to believe the project is an open-ended soft option that will never really happen.

For the green bond market to flourish, it must be fully viable and survive without public sector support. But governments in developed countries have a clear deadline by which they have to make serious cuts to emissions and raise serious funds to help developing countries do the same — so any support to the burgeoning market in that time should be palatable.

It seems churlish to talk about traffic jams at a time when Hong Kong's streets are thronged with the politest protesters one could ever hope to meet. But just before Hong Kong turned upside down I had been chatting to a chum about clogged streets of a different kind in a recent trip of his to India.

Bankers are often cagey when it comes to talking about sensitive commercial data, but Italians are always game to talk politics - and have a knack for the clear if unconventional analogy. This was proven once again when Loan Ranger was getting the latest on the Italian market.

The life of a syndicate banker is fraught with early mornings and sleep deprivation, meaning weekends and holidays are a crucial time for recharging your batteries and hiding the bags under your eyes. Unless, of course, you’re blessed with the boundless energy of National Australia Bank’s Nigel Owen.

With Chinese banks needing a recordbreaking amount of bank capital over the next few years and the first deal expected by the end of 2014, the scaremongers are out force. But as with so much to do with China, the reality is unlikely to be as bad as some would have us believe.

I don't get to travel on someone else's account much these days — who wants to invite a grizzled old has-been like me anywhere? So I was gratified, to say the least, to be invited to host an event in Tokyo recently.

Central banking intervention is set to continue shaping the debt capital markets, no more so than in covered bonds which are the target of the European Central Bank’s third purchase programme. This, along with the targeted long term refinancing operations (TLTRO) and negative deposit rates, will lead to lower supply and a further tightening in spreads.

GlobalCapital: Will issuers outside Europe want to take advantage of a possible gap in European bank supply?

GlobalCapital: When do you think banks will be less focused on improving capital and leaning more towards lending to the real economy?

GlobalCapital: How do you expect negative deposit rates to impact the market?