UK

Frustrated with the terms of the restructuring, and distrustful of Afren and its bondholders, Afren Legal Action tried to revitalise hopes of finding a buyer for Afren. A bid for Afren had been widely considered a good solution to its problems, going back to 2014. Afren, once a poster child for Africa’s energy sector, was potentially still an attractive asset.

Asog was just one Afren shareholder force jockeying for position. As the share price fell, institutional investors, which had dominated Afren’s register, sold some of their shares to other kinds of investor.

On July 31, 2015, Afren went into administration. There was no public outcry, though several national papers in the UK ran the news. Afren had never been a household name.

The Bank of Scotland has become the first bank to not win approval to switch some of its covered bonds from a hard to a soft bullet repayment.

It has been a busy week for Markit’s expansion plans, with the company agreeing to buy CoreOne Technologies and launching an FX trade confirmation service.

There aren’t many corporate insolvencies that would make a good movie. But any scriptwriters out there wanting to emulate the success of the Enron film should read our coverage of Afren this week.

Changing the selection rules for the CDX HY index, which references the debt of US high yield companies, should make it more useful for investors as a hedge against cash bonds. But the even better news is that Markit and CDS market makers seem to have learned from the experience of last year's changes to Europe's equivalent, the iTraxx Crossover.

BNP Paribas responded to investor demand for dollar paper with a $1.5bn additional tier one (AT1) this week, just two months after making its euro debut.

Back in 2010, Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega warned that the world was in the midst of a “currency war” in the wake of US quantitative easing. The term is now back in vogue after China made the shock decision to devalue its currency.

The AT1 market has come of age. In just over two years there is no longer a need for arduous investor education and perfect markets to sell the riskiest bank debt on offer.

Mizuho International has hired an experienced banker in London to head its European flow derivatives business.

Markit has agreed to buy CoreOne Technologies, a provider of regulatory reporting, index management, data management and prime brokerage services to financial institutions.