The GlobalCapital Podcast

Send us Fan Mail A wave of emerging market bond defaults could be about to hit, judging by where EM sovereign bonds trade against US Treasuries. But are we really looking down both barrels of a default deluge or is the situation more nuanced than the numbers suggest?  Meanwhile, one very high profile emerging market borrower, Ukraine, is asking for a debt standstill. We look through what that mean...

Send us Fan Mail Cryptocurrencies have had a rough time of late but they are clearly no flash in the pan. That has driven regulators to intensify their efforts to gain control over this financial frontier. The Bank of England’s deputy governor this week sounded a warning that if the crypto world wasn’t brought under control soon, it risked suffering its own Hindenberg moment, referring to the time...

Send us Fan Mail We reveal why capital markets often barely flicker even when there is the sort of huge political disruption that took place in the UK this week, when prime minister Boris Johnson said he would resign following a series of scandals and a rebellion within his own government. Closer to capital markets, we take a look at the next leap forward in sustainability-linked bonds. Chile may...

Send us Fan Mail In the same week that the Green and Social Bond Principles provided a ton of new guidance on how to apply its formula to different types of security, which we discuss, we take a look at how the capital markets are offering investors different way to fund the green transition. Green capital raising is a rare bright spot in the equity markets these days but it is not all plain saili...

Send us Fan Mail It was not that long ago that we ran a number of stories and podcast episodes about banks battling for staff so that they could get record volumes of deals through the capital markets. With inflation rampant, recession looming and interest rates on the rise, some markets have dried up as M&A grinds to a halt. Now bankers fear for their jobs, with one likening the situation to...

Send us Fan Mail Last week the ECB laid out its plans for its monetary policy. That surely was enough to convince bond markets that it had a grip on both rampant inflation and government bond spreads, right? Wrong. This week it had to convene an unscheduled meeting of its governing council so that it could figure out how to manage spreads in the government bond market. Dealing with inflation is th...

Send us Fan Mail We wouldn’t normally talk about a capital markets conference on the podcast but next week sees one of the biggest — Global ABS, the biggest gathering for the European securitization market — resume its pre-pandemic full, physical form at its regular haunt, Barcelona. It comes just as the securitization markets in Europe are in a rough state.   We discuss what the thousands of dele...

Send us Fan Mail From bonds to equities, issuers are finding it harder to raise capital. Inflation, invasion and disruption, not to mention rising interest rates, are shortening the times when the financial markets are stable enough to allow issuers to come to the market with deals.  We look into what that means for the rest of the year in bond and equity markets and discover that it is forcing is...

Send us Fan Mail There is no doubt that bond markets are becoming tougher places from which to raise money. Even in the public sector bond markets, where issuers flock in times of trouble, what are typically issuers prized for their rarity are now enjoying less demand because investors have come to value highly the ability to sell out of positions easily given the volatility. But at least borrower...

Send us Fan Mail War in Ukraine, the pandemic and the recovery from it, rampant inflation and the end of the era of cheap money — people in the capital markets have a lot to think about when allocating or raising money. But are they missing the biggest problem of all: China’s slowing economy?  A growing number of market participants think so. China as a producer of goods sold to the world and a ke...

Send us Fan Mail Normally when central banks make policy decisions that they were expected to, capital markets activity carries on unencumbered. But not this week. The 50bp interest rate increased from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday was long anticipated but while markets appeared to take the news well at first, by Thursday things had gone sour once more making issuance difficult. Certainly, ther...

Send us Fan Mail It’s not just raw materials and components that are hard to get hold of nowadays. The European leveraged finance market is bang on trend and experiencing some supply chain disruption of its own. We explain which parts of the market are just starting to work again and which are about to seize up and how that will proliferate across other parts of the capital markets.  Naturally, we...

Send us Fan Mail It was just a fortnight ago that we reported on what could turn out to be a swathe of job losses in the equity capital markets. But all is not lost; not only are some companies readying initial public offerings to give ECM bankers something to do, for those still left wondering if they’re facing the chop next, there is a hiring spree afoot elsewhere in the capital markets. We tell...

Send us Fan Mail If ever there was a week to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the international capital markets to what is going on in the rest of the world — in this case the awful events in Ukraine — this was it. On the podcast this week we follow a thread that starts with the appalling situation in eastern Europe and ends in the US securitization markets by way of looking at how companies...

Send us Fan Mail It was only recently that GlobalCapital reported on both the huge amounts of business being done in the capital markets and the tussle between banks to hire enough staff to cope with it all. Record volumes meant soaring pay, especially among the massed legions of junior bankers as firms competed for staff. But the equity capital markets in particular have just had a dreadful quart...

Send us Fan Mail For more than a decade, Europeans and Americans have only known low interest rates and central banks soothing debt markets with endless lashings of liquidity, through buying bonds. In recent years, the European Central Bank has been buying up to 40% of every corporate bond and covered bond issued in the eurozone, as well as vast quantities of public sector bonds. But it is pulling...

Send us Fan Mail A month into Russia’s war on Ukraine, capital markets are getting more used to the risk it poses, and a wider range of issuers are able to raise money. But riskier types of deal — emerging markets, high yield and equities — are still virtually impossible. Emerging market bond issuance did resume with deals for Nigeria and Turkey, but then the brakes were slammed on again this week...

Send us Fan Mail Banks might finally be held to account for the damage to the environment their bond and equity underwriting does. Elsewhere, three Russian companies might face bankruptcy thanks to the effect of sanctions on their convertible bonds. While it has been fairly straightforward to measure what emissions a loan or an investment funds, assessing the part a bank’s capital markets deal arr...

Send us Fan Mail The full implications of the Russian invasion of Ukraine for the capital markets are still far from clear. As we recorded this episode, European leaders were meeting at Versailles to discuss, among other things, another gigantic borrowing programme for the EU that could be funded in the bond markets — this time to fund defence and energy. We discuss all that we know so far on this...

Send us Fan Mail The Russian invasion of Ukraine has given capital markets participants in the West compelling legal, moral and financial reasons to question, and indeed halt, their involvement in financing the country and its businesses. Swathes of new sanctions have forbidden all sorts of financing activity, but critically, investors and companies like index providers — which provide a framework...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s podcast was recorded the morning after Russia began a full scale invasion of Ukraine. We look into the immediate effects on the capital markets — what the fresh rounds of sanctions means for Russian issuers and what sort of deals other borrowers will be able to do once enough stability returns to markets. We also discuss an area of the capital markets where investors a...

Send us Fan Mail The remedy recently imposed upon BNP Paribas for a sexual discrimination case it lost in 2019 could have far reaching effects on the gender pay gap and for transparency over incomes — one of the City’s great taboos — more broadly. Not only did the French bank have to pay Stacey Macken, who won the tribunal, over £2m in compensation but it  has been instructed to conduct a pay audi...

Send us Fan Mail Salomon Brothers is back. One of the most storied names of 1980s Wall Street, immortalised in Michael Lewis’s book Liar’s Poker is a registered trademark once again and is planning to get into the financial markets. Travelers Group swallowed up the original Salomon Brothers in 1998, a firm which merged with Citi in the same year. Citigroup finally dropped the Salomon brand — by th...

Send us Fan Mail Much of the focus in capital markets is on what central banks — and subsequently, issuers of both debt and equity — will do next. We discuss how those policy decisions will affect issuance in the capital markets this year. But meanwhile, a situation is brewing between Argentina, which is in no position to issue debt at all, and the IMF that could have huge repercussions for not on...

Send us Fan Mail Compensation is up across the board for investment banking staff and bankers in the capital markets. But where do you have to work to make the big bucks? The GlobalCapital Podcast reveals the answers. We talk about pay levels — salary and bonus — throughout the ranks and which bits of the bank pay the best to work in. We also talk about what different shops pay and where to locate...