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When Loan Ranger finds out the details of bank meetings, conversation follows a predictable path. Talk is of margins, original issue discounts and tenors. Fascinating stuff, but it means one borrower’s deal can seem much like another’s at times.

GlobalCapital’s annual Global Derivatives Awards in London on September 18 will honour the people, companies and deals that shaped derivatives markets over the last year. Among those winners will be Blythe Masters of JP Morgan, winner of the Outstanding Contribution Award. Ahead of the gala evening, Masters granted a rare interview to GlobalCapital’s Beth Shah to talk about her life and extraordinary career.

European leveraged loan issuers expect the good times to keep rolling this autumn. But issuers considering cross-border transactions should be cautious. Domestic supply is building in the US and this could mean lenders push back on margins.

To readers familiar with Chinese culture, happy mid-autumn festival. Once again, it’s that time of the year when sanity gives way to cultural wisdom and children are allowed to roam the streets with paper lanterns, otherwise known as fishing rods that are on fire.

European leveraged loan issuers expect the good times to keep rolling this autumn. But issuers considering cross-border transactions should be cautious. Domestic supply is building in the US and this could mean lenders push back on margins.

Islamic investors should not allow political turmoil to derail Pakistan’s plan to return to the sukuk market.

The markets may have an opinion on Scottish independence — but the No campaign has been acting like that matters more than anything else. Capital markets should follow the will of the people, not lead it.

India broke with its traditional instincts last week by scrapping a restriction on retail investors buying Basel III bonds. Not only is the U-turn in attitude towards retail protection startling given the country's past attitude to that investor base, but it could also be reckless.

In the Middle East, Emirates NBD has announced a unique approach to asset liability management — physically masticating its outstanding bonds. Most issuers would take the traditional approach of simply buying back their debt in the secondary market, or switching bondholders into a new transaction. Not Emirates NBD. The borrower has whipped up a flurry of interest in a controversial plan to simply eat — as in actually swallow — its dollar bonds.

The question of when interest rates are finally going to rise and by how much is one that preys on the minds of all bankers, least not of course loans officials. A sure-fire indication that we are moving to a rising interest rate environment would do wonders for those looking to increase their allocation to floating rate instruments.

You’ve got to love a good mutiny. As you’ve no doubt seen from this week’s front page story, a bunch of bond bankers have been very vocal in their upset with an issuer because it didn’t listen to their advice. As a result, they say, the transaction did not go as well as expected.

Cynicism is infectious, especially in the capital markets, and it has been easy to sneer at Europe’s investment banks. Lacking scale in the muscle-bound world of bond trading, and hobbled by scandal and regulation, the prevailing narrative has been that they should go big or go home.