News content

Citigroup is determined to emerge as a winner from the Covid-19 crisis and conquer the summit of global investment banking, in the face of any pull to concentrate more on home markets, writes David Rothnie.

Morgan Stanley Investment Management has hired a prominent expert to be its global head of sustainability and brought a senior banker from its capital markets arm to run its sustainable bond investing.

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (BVG) touched off a legal bombshell on Tuesday morning. It left the ECB in an impossible position: it can accept the court's verdict or ignore it, but either decision will undermine its efforts to stabilise Europe's capital markets.

Direct lending funds are likely to be the best choice for sponsors looking to fund buyouts this summer, with investment banks still sitting on substantial bridge books, and simplicity and certainty of execution being the top priorities.

The Loan Market Association (LMA) has set guidelines to clarify how borrowers and banks should implement green and sustainability linked loans.

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday that, while it was not illegal for the Bundesbank to participate in the the European Central Bank’s Public Sector Purchase Programme, the country's central bank may not participate in it unless the ECB can provide a thorough impact assessment. The decision rejected an earlier verdict by the Court of Justice of the European Union.

BNP Paribas blamed European authorities’ restrictions on 2019 dividend payments for losing it €184m in its equities business, when it released its first quarter results on Tuesday. However, in debt capital markets and fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) it was a more positive picture, as the bank took advantage of a surge in debt origination and electronic trading.

A group of veteran fund managers have launched a new boutique asset manager dedicated to responsible investing in emerging market equities.

Jacques Callaghan, formerly of Macquarie Capital, has joined HSBC as head of UK mid-market M&A, concentrating on a wedge of companies that are important to the bank’s new strategy.

Some banks in the eurozone tightened their lending standards in the first quarter of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the globe, even as loan demand surged, according to a European Central Bank survey that provides the first systematic evidence on the subject.

While emerging market bond investors are spending their days in the Covid-19 crisis battling with poor liquidity, cash calls from end investors, and even the odd new issue, debt relief has remained a threat, albeit only a vague one. But at policy level the topic is of growing importance, and what began as a matter for official institution creditors took a step closer to embroiling the private sector this week. Ross Lancaster, Phil Thornton and Oliver West report.

As European countries prepare to ease lockdown measures, those in capital markets are well aware that their day-to-day lives will not go back to how they were anytime soon. They have mixed views on working from home, but will an entirely new working culture emerge?