In the latest bruising encounter between Athens and Europe, the stakes could not be higher. This is certainly in keeping with tradition. It is said that Theseus invented a form of boxing in which two men sat face to face and beat each other until one was dead. But when it comes to this peripheral European economy, just as with ancient Greek boxing (pygmachia), lack of historical references mean the rules can only be inferred. The election of the radical left-wing party Syriza has certainly elect

Is there a more impressive magician out there than Mario Draghi? Yet again the master of sleight of hand and the well-turned phrase pulled off a trick few were expecting. By announcing the roll-out of a €1.1trn (US$1.25trn) QE programme on January 22, the president of the European Central Bank was merely fulfilling a long-standing promise: to buy the issued bonds of eurozone governments, thereby injecting growth and inflation into the ailing 19-member monetary union. Yet despite having signalled

Regional agencies such as Kommunalbanken, Kommuninvest, Municipality Finance and KommuneKredit in the Nordic region and the likes of Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten and Nederlandse Waterschapsbank in the Netherlands have long been a part of the SSA debt landscape, as too have German states. They are familiar and trusted borrowers. But municipality funding has not had too much of a profile in the rest of the Europe. That is all starting to change. There is a recognition that this could be an efficient

The size of Australia’s Kangaroo market has grown significantly in recent years. Last year was a record for debt denominated in Australian dollars. By year-end, DCM volume stood at US$35.4bn, not only a record year but an increase in issuance of 34%. More to the point, bankers called it a break-out year thanks to names such as National Bank of Abu Dhabi or German borrower Landeskreditbank Baden-Wuerttemberg-Foerderbank (L-Bank) that dipped their toes into the market either for the first time or

In the film A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise’s character, Lt. Daniel Kaffee, is having a particularly bad day. Facing a 6am flight to Guantanamo Bay to interrogate a belligerent colonel about a fenceline shooting, the greenhorn lawyer is told that his boss, a ballsy, brassy woman with a dim view of her charge, will be tagging along. “And the hits just keep on coming,” he reflects to himself. Eurozone lenders, used as punching bags by politicians and public alike over the past six years, must know the

What a difference a year makes. As 2014 ticked in, the world was a very different place. Vladimir Putin’s claws weren’t yet scratching a channel down the Donets Basin; Brent crude was still trading around the US$100 per barrel mark; and the black flags of Islamic State had yet to wave over the uplands of Syria and Iraq. Perhaps most shockingly, Europe, racked by debt and the failed tenets of austerity, was seemingly on the verge of pulling itself back from the abyss. Industrial data in core euro

Sovereign countries adopt reform-minded agendas for many reasons. Some actively pursue it, whether for ideological or political reasons. For others, it can become the last remaining course of action once a nation’s finances hit the wall. Slovenia falls firmly in the latter camp. A small but relatively wealthy Central and Eastern European nation with strong trading ties to Austria and Italy, it became the first nation to declare independence from Yugoslavia after the dissolution of the Soviet Uni

The photographic term “double exposure” may have been coined to describe an occupational hazard when using traditional film cameras, but it also captures well the real nature of the risk posed to Latin American development bank Corporacion Andina de Fomento by its two main creditors. Just as in the accidental effect when one photographic image is superimposed upon another, the supranational’s exposure to the problems of its largest sovereign borrowers Argentina and Venezuela – flagged up by Stan

We all clamour for the new and exciting, the fresh and untested, even when it comes to the international debt markets. Take bonds issued by unrated German cities, an asset class offering debt packaged by reliable, stolid Burgermeisters and seasoned with just a smidgeon of added yield. The market remains small, to be sure, with just three transactions sold in 2014 and less than €2bn (US$3bn) raised since 2009, according to data from Thomson Reuters, yet it is set to prosper in the years to come.

Privatisation has long been a cyclical phenomenon. Like fashion or dietary fads, there are times when it’s in favour, and times when it isn’t. The UK set the tempo in the 1980s, stripping out vast chunks of the state and selling them on the London Stock Exchange. A decade later it was the turn of former Soviet states such as Poland and the Czech Republic to chop up slices of once all-powerful state monopolies, then sell them to private investors. The courage of far-sighted legislators in Warsaw

In the fourth quarter of last year the offshore renminbi market for SSAs sprang into life. In quick succession there were issues from the UK, British Columbia and New South Wales Treasury Corp. Before the end of the year they were joined by France’s Caisse d’Amortissement de la Dette Sociale (Cades). It began to look as though an issuance corner had been turned. Was Dim Sum issuance about to move out of the shadows and start to take centre stage for SSAs? Inevitably, the answer is not quite as s

Hand-wringing at January’s World Economic Forum summit in Davos about non-financial risks to growth suggests policymakers may finally be acknowledging that they can no longer ignore an investment trend hitherto confined to the realms of altruism. The WEF’s Global Risks 2015 report launched at Davos indicated emphatically that if the risks facing global growth of the past 10 years were largely macroeconomic, those in the next 10 will be social and environmental. This watershed suggests that, henc

The dramatic rise of left wing political party Syriza has been interpreted by many as evidence of a spike in euroscepticism, raising fears that Greece will default on its debts and leave the euro. But polls have consistently shown Greeks want to stay in the euro – and in Europe. This is something both sides appear to agree on. Syriza has a clear anti-austerity agenda but official party policy is committed to Europe and the single currency. Meanwhile, there is clearly a desire to keep Greece insi

International standards for bank regulation historically focused mainly on capital ratios, but the financial crisis highlighted the need for banks to also maintain a stash of highly liquid assets to get them through periods of stress. In 2015, banks are for the first time being mandated to stock up their so-called liquidity buffers, which is creating increased demand for SSA issued debt, changing the dynamics of a market in which banks have only recently become major investors. “Bank treasuries

Three years ago when the euro appeared on the brink of disintegration, paranoid bond investors could be forgiven for adopting a simple pair of trades: dump debt of peripheral countries and buy core sovereign paper. Yields on sovereign bonds of countries on the southern and western edge of the single currency area soared to historic highs while borrowing costs for Triple A rated debt of the core countries plunged almost to zero. Since then spreads have narrowed. But while there is still a gulf be

Every man has a breaking point, Captain Willard is told in the film Apocalypse Now. Every country too, it seems. When Greece’s populace turned out in force on January 25 to usher in a radical leftist party, Syriza, it was in direct if belated response to years of relentless, grinding austerity – and the threat of many more to come. At first, the elections – the biggest political earthquake in Athens since the dismantling of the military junta in 1974 – did little to impact on the wider region. M