Providing an edgy backdrop to the conversation, the roundtable took place in late October, soon after the bond market had fallen victim to one its bouts of volatility. The fact that this was seen as a positive because it shook out some of the more egregious areas of mispricing and offered some better priced re-entry points neatly underlined sentiment around the table. All of that said, however, while the mood of the group was broadly optimistic there was a distinct if slightly understated underc

Jeff Tannenbaum BofA Merrill Lynch Jeff Tannenbaum is head of European DCM origination and syndicate at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Based in London, he is responsible for the primary syndication and distribution of private, public and structured debt products including liability management. In 2013, he took on responsibility for European FIG DCM and recently expanded his remit to include corporates, FIG and SSA covering all debt related products and derivative-based financing solutions. Mark

IFR: Good morning and welcome to IFR’s Debt Capital Markets roundtable. Given the many market themes in play and the transformation that the industry is confronting, I thought it would a good idea to get everyone around the table for a second year to talk through the various topics and gauge the view of you as senior practitioners. Martin, could you kick us off with some opening comments about the general state of the market? We’ve seen the push and pull of monetary policy this year. How does th

IFR: So how does this issue feed through into bond pricing? Martin Egan, BNP Paribas: It’s a key point; and, again, as we said at this roundtable last year, we were woefully concerned about secondary market liquidity and we say that in different forums to regulators. Yet on the other hand, we have seen great levels of issuance this year at the tightest spreads and yields seen for some time. From a regulatory perspective, I’m sure they’re thinking: “oh, well, the banks say there is a concern here

IFR: Shouldn’t issuers get a pricing advantage by going through all the work to get green credentials, to go through the standards, to put the monitoring and project selection in place? On the buyside, if you’ve got ethical investors going into green bonds, I have a problem in an ethical investor buying a green bond from a utility where most of its production is either from, say, coal-fired power production or whatever. But on the sell-side, shouldn’t issuers get a benefit, Fabio? Fabio Lisanti,