UK

A former Bank of America Merrill Lynch trader has been fined £60,090 for manipulating the price of Dutch government bonds on the electronic platform BrokerTec — though the profit made on the trading was 'insignificant'.

The German Investment Funds Association (BVI) demanded the relocation of euro denominated interest rate swaps clearing from London to the EU 27 on Wednesday, citing regulatory concerns due to Brexit and lower costs for fund companies.

The long-awaited Shanghai-London Stock Connect is set for launch next year, a source at the London Stock Exchange has revealed.

Liberty Living, the UK student accommodation provider, built a strong order book for its debut bond on Tuesday. It raised £500m, split equally between seven and 12 year tranches.

Property developer Soho China has filed for a Rmb10bn ($1.5bn) medium term note programme with the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors, in preparation for its debut deal in the Panda bond market.

China Resource Cement Holdings is making a return to Panda bonds more than a year after its debut in the Mainland’s onshore renminbi market.

Corporate bond issuers are using this week to prepare investors for the last window of issuance of 2017. Monday saw more issuers add their names to the roadshow schedule in Europe as TLG Immobilien used the quiet conditions to issue its debut bond.

Derivatives markets participants listening in to BBC Radio 4 on Monday morning would have been surprised by a voice that they are more accustomed to hearing in conference halls — that of Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

UK bank Barclays made its first trip to the Singapore dollar market on Thursday, grabbing S$200m ($147.5m) from an opportunistic transaction.

Leveraged loan issuers used to call on direct lending players to pre-place small portions of their offerings, mostly second liens. But as direct lenders grow bigger funds, their appetite for loans is starting to impact entire deals.

The updated Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) has been in effect for 18 months, but its force in the markets is due to burn brighter as regulators take hold of the data deluge generated by MiFID next year. And fixed income will be in focus for the first time.

Repo traders convened this week in Brussels to rethink how to fix the plumbing of financial markets and mulled using other forms of collateral in the market.