Blackstone has declared open season on planned exits through IPOs of owned companies in 2026, with offerings lined up in the US and overseas.

Lazard reported record revenues from financial advisory in 2025 as the M&A cycle continued to deepen.

Indonesian equities slumped after MSCI raised the possibility of downgrading the country to frontier market status, just as lingering concerns over policy credibility were exacerbated by the appointment of the president’s nephew as deputy governor at the central bank.

Just whisper it, but JP Morgan may have a stiffer fight on its hands to retain its investment banking crown in 2026 after 17 consecutive years at the top.

Borrowers from Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa issued close to US$80bn of bonds in January, smashing the previous monthly record for the region.

FIG issuers continued to set historically tight spreads for senior preferred bonds in the last week of January as the start of European bank reporting heralded a pickup in supply, led by Nordea Bank, which priced a "super-tight" €750m seven-year deal. 

China has reportedly removed borrowing limits on property developers known as the "three red lines", a policy that triggered the current crisis in the real estate sector when it was introduced at the start of the decade.

AT&T was back in the US high-grade bond market during the last week of January when the telecoms giant raised US$6.5bn through a five-part offering as it sought to ease its hefty funding burden for this year. 

US auto ABS from Ford Motor and General Motors could be partially displaced by cheaper deposit funding once the automakers' planned banks are up and running.

Vertical Bridge is returning to the ABS primary market with a US$1.66bn securitisation backed by a portfolio of wireless cell towers it oversees and that has increased significantly following a lease-backed deal with Verizon.

High Ridge has lined up its first aircraft securitisation, aiming to take advantage of improved funding conditions and robust demand from airlines that are trying to accommodate increasing ridership around the world.

The European CMBS market has carried its momentum into the new year following a record 12 months, with market participants expressing confidence that issuance volumes could rise further.

The bond market is gearing up to test the transition label with the next generation of deals set to be supported by new guidance and principles that will introduce the concept of "carbon lock-in" to the wider capital markets.

One of the UK’s largest pension schemes is set to put as much as £1bn into an innovative transition credit fund from Axa Investment Managers, highlighting continuing appetite among asset owners for ESG investing despite the unsupportive political environment.

Barely a quarter of sustainability indexes outperformed their non-ESG counterparts in 2025 in a highly concentrated equity market dominated by artificial intelligence, according to research by Morningstar. 

The sustainable finance market’s most significant near‑term driver is, unexpectedly, the booming and potentially high-emitting global build‑out of data centres and AI infrastructure, according to a prominent lawyer in the sector.

January has proven to be one of the worst starts to the year for accelerated bookbuilds in EMEA ECM in more than a decade, with the lowest cash volume and second lowest number of issues since 2010.

A possible IPO for SpaceX is the deal on everybody's lips, and unsurprisingly so, considering the aerospace company combines one of the most controversial CEOs in Elon Musk, an interplanetary ambition to put humans on Mars and a prospective valuation of US$1.5trn that would make for the largest listing ever.

USA Rare Earth secured US$3.1bn of funding on Monday through a combination of public equity and US government investments, allowing it to dramatically accelerate production of rare earth minerals.

Shares of Austria's Asta Energy Solutions popped on Friday's debut in Frankfurt, with shares trading up by a third following its €165.5m IPO. Most encouraging for a modest IPO for a company with a market capitalisation of €420m is the more than €1.3bn of demand from long-only investors.

A sudden souring in the software sector caused Belgium-headquartered technology company Team.blue and Italian healthcare software company Dedalus to hit the stop button last week on exercises to reprice term loan Bs.

Borrowers have swarmed over the European leveraged loan market but the extreme bias towards repricings and refinancings over new money means the tussle between supply and demand has only swung further in issuers’ favour.

Repricings are again setting the tone in the US leveraged loan market, as borrowers move quickly to cut borrowing costs amid white-hot investor demand and a still-limited flow of new money M&A and leveraged buyout financings.

European private credit fundraisers are coming off a strong 2025 where they grabbed significant market share from North America strategies and are cautiously optimistic about another positive year ahead.