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The European Central Bank (ECB) gave lenders even more of an incentive to use its Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO) this week, dropping the potential rate of funding down to minus 1%. But the unveiling of a new unconditional lending scheme set tongues wagging, with market participants debating which banks might use the money and what they might put it towards, writes Tyler Davies.

Lee Buchheit is a veteran of sovereign debt restructuring and is considered by many to be a world expert in the field. He has worked on debt restructuring among many of the emerging markets countries, including Argentina, Greece and Venezuela. GlobalCapital caught up with him this week to discuss the debt crisis gripping the EM universe, and how private sector creditors should approach requests for debt standstills.

Lloyds Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland have decided not to charge clients an arranging fee when lending via the UK’s Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS), while HSBC will not charge any early repayment fees.

Deutsche Bank has regained its number one spot in its home market, but it was its traditional investment banking business that shone rather than investments made as part of the firm’s new Germany-focused strategy, writes David Rothnie.

Market participants argued that the European Commission could have gone further this week to ease leverage ratio constraints on banks during the coronavirus crisis.

Société Générale’s equities division posted a 99% year-on-year drop in revenues for the first quarter on Thursday, contributing to an overall loss in both the wholesale division and for the bank overall.

Barclays’ revenue from markets in the first quarter was its best ever, the bank said, but another large figure overshadowed this: credit provisions across the group came in at more than double the consensus estimate, on the basis of macroeconomic assumptions seen as conservative and a £300m hit from low oil prices.

In contrast to what analysts had expected before its first quarter results, Deutsche Bank reckons its investment bank will outperform last year’s revenue figures in 2020. However, its fixed income and currencies sales and trading business did not match peers’ revenue growth in the first quarter.

Whole industries are on their knees, desperate for salvation from governments. Moral outrage fills the air, as fortune's wheel turns plutocrats into mendicants. States have the power of life and death — but they must resist the temptation to play God.

Currency markets helped revenues in HSBC’s global banking and markets division in the first quarter. But along with the rest of the group, it had to take big losses for credit exposures thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

From Italian government bonds to fallen angels, nothing is junk unless the European Central Bank says so.

The Financial Conduct Authority has written to UK banks warning them against pressuring clients for mandates on Covid-19 equity capital raises using their lending relationship as justification.