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Asian issuers have got used to paying little or no new issue premium for too long. The big appetite among bond investors at the start of this year meant they could get away with it — but those days are behind them.

Long gone are the days when Cédulas and Pfandbriefe traded within a few basis points of each other and no one could conceive of a covered bond default. Today that prospect is only as remote as a sovereign default. So spare a thought for investors who have no way of hedging their risk.

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Hedge funds have been buying quanto credit default swaps on Spain over the last week to take advantage of agreements that obligate firms to buy back quanto CDS that they sold last year.

The lack of LBOs in the European market or pipeline makes this early summer a perfect window for leveraged borrowers with maturity issues to make the most of the dwindling CLO community. But time is running out.

The amount of volatility risk being traded daily in Apple options is regularly exceeding volatility traded on the S&P 500 exchange-traded fund. Implied volatility has subsequently been rising in tandem with the stock itself, with both factors signaling to some a possible break in the rise of either stock or volatility levels.

Analysts assess the effect rising commodity prices will have on the region's economic outlook.

With the monetary morphine of the LTRO wearing off, the eurozone’s two bellwethers of sovereign risk are again under scrutiny. While the fundamentals are worse in Spain, the “Monti effect” is fading at an inauspicious time for Italy.

Asia’s loan bankers may have just been through a dismal quarter, but there is always someone worse off. They should count themselves lucky they are not securitisation bankers, who have suffered a dismal few years. Perhaps by working together, bankers in the two areas can add a bit of zest to the loan market — and some much needed volumes to the securitisation market.

In its final consultation on bail-in, the European Commission is asking key stakeholders whether short term debt should be included in burden-sharing arrangements. This clashes with the drive by other regulators to make banks less reliant on short term funding. The result? Confusion at a time when certainty is needed.

The reception given by investors to Iceland Foods’ debut leveraged loan was anything but frosty. But it would be unwise to draw any hasty conclusions from its success. Expect the LBO market to remain a cold and lonely place for a while yet.

In a bid to grab ever smaller windows of opportunity, borrowers from peripheral Europe have embraced private markets wholeheartedly this year — helping to drive quarterly MTN volumes to their highest level for four years. With the conditions that led to this result showing little sign of changing soon, flexibility looks set to remain the top priority for peripheral issuers.