United States

The US is one step closer to becoming a renminbi hub with Bank of China New York officially appointed as the country’s first RMB clearing bank, a major development towards the internationalisation of the currency.

Synechron, a technology services provider, is targeting margin calls as one of six ‘blockchain accelerator’ applications for the financial markets.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has penalised Russia’s VTB Bank and its London-based VTB Capital investment banking subsidiary over what the Commission called "fictitious" and "non-competitive" block trades of Russian ruble/US dollar futures contracts.

ICE Clear Europe, the European clearing arm of Intercontinental Exchange, has been authorised by the Bank of England and by the European Securities and Markets Authority as a central counterparty (CCP).

Industry-wide collaboration on distributed ledger technology governance is needed and policymakers must plan ahead for the impact of such advances on securities markets and post-trade infrastructures, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation has said.

Derivatives market participants must embrace new technologies to meet the challenges it faces in seeking greater standardisation and efficiency, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association has said. These include opportunities for use of blockchain, ‘RegTech’, product identifiers and ‘common domain models’.

Deutsche Bank is at real risk of failing to pay coupons on its additional tier one instruments, as a potential $14bn US RMBS settlement threatens to erase the bank's available distributable items (ADIs). Outstanding DB AT1 securities reacted accordingly last Friday, shooting nearly 200bp wider.

Rating: A3/A

The dollar market continued to churn out jumbo deals this week as borrowers shrugged off volatility to secure strong order books and healthy new issue premiums.

ABN Amro got the size and pricing it was after with its first dollar print of 2016, amid choppy market conditions.

Telenor sold $1.5bn of shares in VimpelCom, the Russian telecoms company, this week, in a combined equity placing and exchangeable bond that were well received, despite the Uzbek bribery scandal that engulfed both companies last year.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange plans to launch options trading on the FTSE Emerging Index next week, offering market participants exposure to the performance of large and mid-cap companies from advanced and secondary emerging markets.