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◆ EU’s securitization plan leaked ◆ The first new EM sovereign issuer for years ◆ Who can be sued for climate change?

Interest rates coming down was supposed to be a sure bet. Now it’s not. Long government bond yields are rising, and not just in the US. Investors are worried — the term premium is climbing, which means it’s not enough now. It’s safest to stay away from duration.
We try to diagnose this queasy market for high quality bonds. Are there any silver linings?
MLex, a regulatory news service, has leaked two crucial draft proposals from the European Commission for how it will reform rules on securitization. Will they ease what the market feels is regulators’ stranglehold?
It’s six years since the last new sovereign bond issuer appeared from a true emerging market, but the Kyrgyz Republic came this week. The bond was a hit — we explore what it means.
You may not have heard of Huaraz — or Hamm. But you’ve probably heard of RWE, the German power company which has been called Europe’s biggest carbon emitter.
This week an appeal court in Hamm, Germany denied a lawsuit by a farmer from Huaraz, Peru. He had sued RWE for damages for the risk to his home from global warming-induced flooding. 
But his supporters believe they achieved their aim: establishing that carbon emitters can be held liable for climate change.

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◆ Capital markets' Bloomberg scare 
◆ SSAs tipped to go sub-US Treasuries 
◆ Jumbos devour credit demand 

A blip in Bloomberg's terminal services this week delayed bookbuilding on a number of syndications and bond auctions. It passed with seemingly little harm done. But it did reveal how dependent bond issuance and fixed income has become on the company's platform. 

We asked what would be at stake if there was a longer outage and what can be done to prevent major disruption.

Meanwhile, rising US Treasury yields mean SSA bonds are trading at ever smaller spreads over them. It wasn't that long ago that issuers questioned the wisdom of trying to price bonds at a single-digit spread to the US benchmark. This week a German issuer built its biggest every orderbook in the currency with a bond that came at 7bp over — it then tightened to 3.5bp over.

Now the SSA market is wondering if or when an issuer will price through what is supposed to be the world's rick-free benchmark security. We lay out the cases for and against.

Finally, we ask whether the European corporate bond market is running out of steam after one jumbo deal too many, and we also take a look at the bustling market for the riskiest part of a bank's capital stack: additional tier one paper.

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◆ What happened at the EBRD's Annual Meetings 
◆ Romania's new president and the fiscal fright that awaits him 
◆ Investors distracted from FIG by US corporates

GlobalCapital was on the ground at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development's Annual Meetings in London this week. We reveal what was discussed and decided, from the bank's capital situation and US involvement, to its support for Ukraine and beyond.

Meanwhile, Romania goes to the polls this weekend. Whoever wins the presidential election faces the challenge of bringing down a big deficit. As one of the emerging markets' biggest bond issuers, that may have repercussions for its credit.

Finally, we looked at the interplay between two different parts of the credit markets this week as US corporate issuers' stole European banks' thunder. We look ahead to how this will affect issuance to come.

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◆ US gives further clues on MDB support 
◆ FIG issuers face funding choices 
◆ What's the point of the EU green bond standard?

We surveilled the SSA bond market this week and the development finance world to see what both made of US decisions about financial support for a number of international development funders. The result was relief but it was not unqualified, as we ponder what this may mean for US president Donald Trump's review into the country's involvement in international financial institutions.

Meanwhile, banks are facing a stark choice about whether to raise covered bond funding or to do unsecured deals. We examine their options and the factors affecting their decisions.

Following a deal from Iberdrola this week, we also look at how enthusiastic issuers have been to bring bonds under the EU green bond standards, a new label denoting use of proceeds aligned with the bloc's Taxonomy of Sustainable Activities, and whether there they offer the market any real benefit.

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◆ SLBs miss targets with hundreds more up for review 
◆ US issuers make hay in European sunshine 
◆ Banks probe longer dated debt issuance

The wave of sustainability-linked bonds that were all the rage a few years ago are now reaching the point where their issuers' performance against their environmental KPIs is being judged. 

Two issuers this week have failed to meet their targets and will pay higher coupons as a result. We took the opportunity to see what impact this might have on supply and demand for a product that has become a niche when at one point it threatened to be the next big thing, or whether there are other factors that will help or hinder its renaissance.

We also look at some eye-catching bond issues in euros by high profile US companies, including a debut from Alphabet, to see what is driving issuance.

Finally, we discuss banks' long-dated funding options in the bond market.

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◆ Insiders assess Scott Bessent's speech on MDB reform 
◆ European Commission's latest attempt to ease capital market access 
◆ Encouraging signs for credit issuers after tariff turmoil

The US administration gave some clues as to its beliefs on how the IMF and the World Bank should change their operations for the first time this week since president Donald Trump signed an executive order in February asking for a review into the country's involvement in international financial organisations.

US treasury secretary Scott Bessant outlined at an event in Washington, DC to coincide with the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings his gripes with the two institutions. We discuss if and how reform can be achieved and what the bond market and development finance specialists made of what Bessent said.

The EU meanwhile has launched a consultation into removing capital barriers across the bloc. We discuss what it wants to achieve and whether it is likely to do so.

Finally, after weeks of US tariffs causing turmoil in capital markets, we look at credit to see how issuers are finding their way back to the primary market and adjusting to the new level of spreads.

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◆ Running a bond business in a crisis 
◆ Bank issuers find their way back into the bond market 
◆ Can frontier emerging market sovereigns fund themselves?

This was supposed to be a decent year for banks in the debt and equity capital markets. But the uncertainty generated by a chaotic US tariff policy has wrecked investment banks' ability to plan and operate in their markets.

We look at what is grinding the sell-side's gears and investigate how banks should navigate the volatility to meet their budgets.

One area of the bond market where issuance has been slow to resume since the US first announced its new tariffs is the senior unsecured FIG market. Issuers returned this week, so we took the opportunity to examine where FIG borrowers can raise debt capital from covered bonds all the way down to subordinated debt.

The yields on many frontier emerging market sovereign bonds have gapped higher this month to above the 10% level that many consider the beginning of the death zone for debt sustainability. We ask whether this has the makings of a debt crisis, or if issuers are well prepared to weather the storm.

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◆ Did we come close to a full blown crisis before Trump's tariff climbdown? 
◆ Will we face another in 90 days' time? 
◆ UK regulator's astonishing covered bond ruling

We looked this week into whether the US's decision to postpone the imposition of punishing tariffs by 90 days averted a financial crisis, or merely postponed it.

The action in the US Treasury market was not good this week as investors and traders appeared to pile into cash rather than assets. Stock markets were red but the US government bond market caught no safe haven bid and sold off too. 

The peril abated with the tariff postponement on Wednesday but there were signs of a brewing crisis in the run-up to that decision. We ask whether markets will be better prepared in July if the US goes ahead with its trade policy.

We also delve into a decision by the UK regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority, to disallow non-UK covered bonds from counting as high quality liquid assets for UK banks. We explore the ramifications for UK lenders and the covered bond market.

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◆ How US tariffs will affect bond issuers in the medium and long term
◆ Liberation Day: your funniest quotes 
◆ A funding update from KfW's head of capital markets, Petra Wehlert

US president Donald Trump's imposition of a vast swathe of tariffs on imports bludgeoned stock markets this week and proved the stuff of nightmares for investors as they contemplated the possibility of recession and the return of inflation.

But the reality for the bond market will likely be rather more nuanced. We picked our way through Europe's investment grade corporate and financial institution bond markets to see what "Liberation Day" will mean for credit issuers' immediate deal pipelines and the longer term.

We also discussed the ramifications for the many varied economies and borrowers in the CEEMEA region as we followed the trail of cause and effect from the Oval Office to South Africa and Romania, and via China to Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.

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◆ Farewell, KommuneKredit ◆ Covered bonds advance on SSAs’ territory ◆ Ivory Coast makes funding breakthrough ◆ Romania’s risks

Genuinely useful applications of AI are still rare in capital markets, but UniCredit has come up with an intriguing one. It has built a tool called DealSync that is helping it generate M&A mandates.
The supranational, sovereign and agency bond market was shocked on Wednesday to learn that it would be losing a well known issuer, KommuneKredit. The Danish government has decided it will be cheaper to just issue bonds itself. Could other agencies disappear?
Covered bond spreads have been getting tighter and tighter, while SSA spreads are widening. Might covered bonds actually start pricing inside some of the best public sector issuers such as German states or Dutch agencies?
In emerging markets, heavy issuer Romania’s dual tranche bond this week went well, but there were telltale signs of the funding stress the country could face if it does not resolve its political difficulties and huge budget deficit.
Ivory Coast has a better story to tell — it has become only the second African country to issue an international bond in its domestic currency. This funding technique, widely used in Latin America and central Asia, holds out hope of reducing African countries’ need to borrow riskily in hard currency, exposing themselves to FX risk.