The GlobalCapital Podcast

The way people did business and went about their work in the capital markets changed almost overnight in early 2020 with the advent of the coronavirus pandemic — and in ways many would have previously thought impossible.

 Gone were the gruelling roadshows and short haul business trips as deal marketing went online. Gone too was the need to be present in the office or on the trading floor. Compliance and technological worries were sw...

If the COP 26 conference on climate, which concludes this week in Glasgow, has had a consistent theme, it has been trying to agree how much funding the developing world needs from the rich one to combat the most severe consequences of climate change, and how to make sure that funding  gets there.

In this week’s podcast we examine some of the smart and innovative ways capital markets can help bring about climate adaptation in the dev...

It’s half time in Glasgow at the COP 26 conference where the world has gathered to thrash out the next steps in the fight against climate change. GlobalCapital, which has been reporting from the front lines of ESG finance since the concept’s inception, has boots on the ground at the event (and not on the other side of Scotland, like CNN) while we have also been involved in a special collaborative project with our sister publication...

With record amounts of issuance in the equity capital markets, dealers and issuers have become increasingly reliant upon cornerstone investors to ensure their deals get done.

 A cornerstone investor — one that commits to a large chunk of stock in an IPO before book building begins in exchange for a full allocation of shares — should bring several benefits to a new listing by removing some of the underwriting risk, encouraging other ...

Will capital markets convert to using blockchain-based systems? Will digital currencies replace conventional ones? These questions have been in the air for a long time, but the uncertainty is fading. Increasingly, it looks like the answer to both will be yes.

 Two experiments this week bring those prospects nearer. SG’s Forge subsidiary has begun a repo transaction on tokenised covered bonds, conducted wholly on the blockchain. And ...

Energy suppliers and customers are facing mounting costs thanks to the rocketing price of gas. Heavy demand, particularly from China, combined with low storage in Europe has meant scarcity, which has driven up prices. 

In the UK, where residential energy customers benefit from a price cap, many smaller energy suppliers have gone out of business finding themselves unable to pass on rising prices to end customers. These seemingly unpr...

The ECB’s Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (Pepp) is set to end in March. It has been spectacularly successful in suppressing European government bond spreads at a time when those sovereigns have had to raise more money than ever to fund their way out of the pandemic. Naturally, the looming deadline has market players worried about what will happen to the yields of countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece. The ECB this week a...

Equity markets have been on a tear since an initial tumble when the coronavirus pandemic began. Lashings of central bank support for markets, optimism over the recovery, emergency balance sheet repair and issuers and sellers taking advantage of rocketing valuations have kept developed market valuations climbing. It has become a very crowded trade, with investors bemoaning the amount of work they are being asked to do to keep up jus...

Capital markets around the world had to get up to speed quickly last week with Evergrande, the huge Chinese property developer teetering on the brink of default on $20bn of dollar bonds and some $280bn of other liabilities including renminbi bonds. In this week’s GlobalCapital podcast, GC Asia editor Rashmi Kumar and Latin American bonds reporter Olly West explore the possible outcomes, including a shock to China’s ultra-important ...

The twin influences of the pandemic and the EU continue to form the size and shape of its biggest bond market — that for government debt.

There are signs that the spike in bond issuance driven by the pandemic will start to fall now the recovery is underway. But it’s not all about supply and demand with public debt such a hot political issue within the EU.

As the pandemic took its toll, the more frugally minded member states had to pa...

Every constituent of the capital markets is eager to be seen considering the environmental, social and governance impact of their activities. The private equity industry is no exception. But while it may well be able to screen what it buys as far as the E and G of the ESG trinity are concerned, it sometimes struggles with the S. That’s because the consequences of a PE buyout of a company are often job losses and lower benefits for ...

A surge in capital markets business following the pandemic has caused a bidding war for junior bankers – those in the first few years of their careers, who can execute deals, if not necessarily run a business yet. At the same time, investment banking is no longer the tallest tree in the career forest for the ambitious. Banks must now compete with all sorts of other employers for the best and brightest. The result has been a rush to...

For a market so well supported by central bank bond buying, there have been some strange dynamics at play in European corporate debt of late. In some corners of the market, deals have struggled and yet just this week a borrower brought a deal in the sort of size you would normally expect to see in a busy September, not while everyone is supposed to be at the beach in August. The monster order books of just a few months ago seem to ...

Across the world’s financial centres, summer interns and graduate trainees are taking their first steps in investment banking. This year too, one bank has welcomed school leaver apprentices to its front office for the first time. There is no doubt that that marks a huge change in how banks recruit junior staff, which for years has been defined by hot pursuit of those with elite academic credentials. But has the jobs market changed?...

Despite a lot of excitable talk about the tapering of central bank asset purchases around the world earlier in the year, the ECB this week gave the capital markets a clear indication that the direction of its monetary policy would remain extremely loose. The Frankfurt-based institution has tweaked not only its inflation target but its forward guidance, which outlines how it plans to achieve this. We discuss what that means for borr...

The direct lending market in Europe, where funds lend directly to companies rather than through a bank intermediary, has blossomed over the last decade or so, giving businesses that typically cannot issue bonds access to an alternative source of capital to bank funding, which itself has not always been easy to come by. Direct lenders, for their part, have attracted investment from all manner of institutional investors looking for j...

Both the ECB and the European Commission this week revealed plans to influence and direct the path of the booming sustainable finance markets. The central bank has made fighting climate change a central part of its monetary policy thinking, while the Commission wants to tackle a wide range of sustainable finance activity from regulating ESG themed issuance, to ratings agencies and more besides. But is more regulation helpful or a h...

The EU has made a strong start to funding its €800bn Next Generation EU programme in the bond market. It will be printing an awful lot of bonds over the next few years, way beyond what a supranational would usually issue and bringing the sort of volume more typical of a sovereign borrower. It is only supposed to be a temporary measure to fund the pandemic recovery but now people are wondering if the EU shouldn’t issue of this sort ...

The demand for sustainable finance has exploded in the last few years. It is a hotbed of innovation as debt issuers look to make the most of investors’ desire to fund a better world. This week GlobalCapital considers one of the most recent innovations: sustainability-linked debt. The format is simple; a borrower pays more or less on its debt depending on whether it meets certain sustainability targets. But two deals this week highl...