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The Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) said it is working with Hong Kong’s stock exchange to launch Green Bond Connect, an initiative to help Bond Connect investors identify Chinese bonds that meet international green standards. But market participants are divided on whether such an initiative is necessary. Noah Sin reports.

China’s FX reserves rise for the fourth consecutive month in May, a Chinese securities regulator says the country will start allowing foreign investors to trade commodities futures onshore, and Ford Motor’s onshore financial arm issues RMB-denominated bonds.

The Bank of England has been dragged back into the mire of Libor-rigging investigations, after the BBC found tapes of Barclays traders referring to "pressure from the UK government and Bank of England" to keep their submissions low. The witch-hunt is already well under way but, if the Bank exerted pressure, it was the right thing to do.

Regulators and market participants are increasingly concerned about the spikes in repo rates at the end of quarters and years. Last year finished with a particular squeeze in the European market — perhaps exacerbated by the huge fines faced by Deutsche and Credit Suisse last year.

Since its arrival 40 years ago, Morgan Stanley has been adopted by the UK investment banking industry as one of its own, writes David Rothnie.

The charts and information included in the following pages have been extracted from a piece published by Morgan Stanley’s European Banks Research team on May 20, 2015 entitled ‘AT1 – The Investor Base’. The research piece was published on the back of an AT1 survey conducted independently by Morgan Stanley’s Fixed Income Research department in April 2015. The extracts included here are for illustrative purposes only and selected to provide a recent perspective of the AT1 investor base. For the avoidance of doubt, these information points do not constitute Morgan Stanley Research and should not be considered as a Morgan Stanley research publication.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) and Markit have partnered to launch a trade classification tool for EMIR, which will allow investors to determine clearing obligations.

Event driven macroeconomic factors are driving investors to put on options hedges, particularly as sell-offs in credit and interest rate markets spill over to equities, according to strategists.

Changing regulations, evolving cost structures and collateral optimisation systems moving to the front office are forcing buyside firms to consider outsourcing their operations, according to a leading market research firm.

The Australian Securities Exchange has launched FlexClear, an over-the-counter service for equities options that is expected to benefit buyside firms looking to tailor strategies through central clearing.

Société Générale Prime Services has begun executing and clearing non-deliverable forwards through a central counterparty, to allow users to gain margin efficiency and risk protection.

Banks and derivatives market participants that outsource their IT requirements should select vendors who differentiate themselves from competition, play to their strengths, and who will look to the future, according to one market intelligence chief.