Could capital market instruments help the world prepare for or react to another pandemic? Those who have spent the last few years designing these types of tools for natural disasters have some ideas.

In GlobalMarkets’ discussion with DMO heads from Lithuania, Slovenia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan at the end of May, there emerged an optimistic outlook for their countries.

The coronavirus pandemic has catapulted capital markets forward in time. Things thought impossible have come about — above all, a sustained flow of credit through a harsh economic downturn. But are the markets heading for utopia or dystopia?

As part of the Global Borrowers & Bond Investors Forum Virtual 2020, GlobalCapital hosted a panel in May to discuss how supranationals’ businesses are changing during this crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic has meant vastly increased demands on their lending. The supranationals have had to drastically alter their plans and strategies to help their clients in fighting the virus, and in mitigating the economic consequences of global lockdown. That has meant that many of the panellists’ institutions will be turning to the capital markets for larger sums than they had anticipated. Of course, as is the case for so many, they are having to do so without the traditional comforts and conveniences of an office infrastructure — although this has caused less disruption and inefficiency than might have been expected.

The coronavirus crisis has brought the role of the public sector agency into sharper focus than ever. With companies suffering devastating losses of revenues, sovereigns are doing their best to shoulder the burden and ensure companies have what they need to protect jobs. To do this, many sovereigns are leaning on their agencies as the best way to transmit economic support packages. GlobalCapital held a roundtable in mid-May to discuss the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the agency sector and how it is managing the crisis.

Just as it did in and after 2008-2009, the financing burden of responding to 2020’s crisis has fallen squarely on the shoulders of governments. But there are essential differences between the crises, not least the speed and scale with which sovereign issuers have had to jump into the bond markets. In the UK, within six weeks, a full year’s public borrowing requirement of £156bn had multiplied into a four months’ requirement of £225bn. To put that into context, the UK Gilt market’s previous busiest year was 2009-2010, during which it raised £227.6bn.