Produced in association with the European Investment Bank Uniform sustainable finance framework Europe’s regulatory and supervisory framework for sustainable finance is rapidly evolving towards a single classification system for economic activities that contribute substantially to EU sustainability objectives. This should pave the way for a clearer description of the compatibility – or not – of the rest of the economy with those objectives. Ultimately, the objective is to fight

After the Covid pandemic forced the debt management office to raise a record amount of debt, Sir Robert Stheeman, chief executive of the UK DMO, was enjoying a less eventful 2022 until Liz Truss became prime minister and tore up economic orthodoxy with her so-called mini-budget, a package of unfunded tax cuts that sent the market into meltdown and threw grit into the gears of the DMO's funding plans. But worse was to come. At 11am on September 28 2022, the DMO was about to price a £4.5bn g

The humanitarian impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine has been, and continues to be, calamitous. For one, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports that the military offensive has displaced nearly 30% of the Ukrainian population. Ripples from the conflict have been felt far and wide with higher energy and commodity prices stoking inflation and precipitating a round of rapid and drastic interest rates hikes. Financial stability has been compromised. A joint

In February, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration issued a US$1.25bn social bond – a record for the development bank. The deal, which matures in 2026, attracted bumper demand from investors, with the order book five times larger than the bank’s minimum target of US$500m. It was the bank’s second social bond of the year, having already issued a smaller US$130m 10-year deal to Taiwanese investors in January. Other SSA issuers have also been targeting social spending

As annual offshore G3 bond issuance from Asia (ex-Australia and Japan) contracted for the first time in a decade in 2022 while issuance in local Asian currency surged and the offshore primary renminbi markets exceeded issuance in dollars for the first time, market participants pondered a question: is this representative of an axiomatic shift in the “big picture”? One answer is that it is just temporary and based on an inauspicious US interest rate dynamic in the face of Federal Reser

Inflationary pressure was already building in the global economy before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent oil, coal and gas prices surging higher. Higher energy costs reinforced the underlying inflationary trend, which combined with tight labour markets, sent price rises in the UK, for example, to levels not seen for over 40 years. Central banks around the world reacted to the jump in wholesale and retail prices by rapidly increasing short-term interest rates. The US Federal Reserve, for i

In 2022, total issuance out of the Middle East amounted to US$10.78bn, down from US$37.82bn and US$15.37bn in 2020 and 2021, respectively, according to Refinitiv. However, this year, supply started to pick up again – between January and the end of April 2023, it added up to US$15.92bn. Last year, Saudi Arabia accounted for 50% of issuance, followed by the United Arab Emirates at 28.7% and Israel at 15.7%. Between January and the end of April this year, Saudi made up 61%, Israel 12.5% and J

Sub-Saharan Africa’s public debt has more than tripled since 2010, rising to US$1.14trn at the end of 2022 from US$354bn in 2010, according to the World Bank. It increased faster before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic – at an average annual growth rate of 12% between 2010 and 2019 compared with 9% during the 2020–22 period. The issue for many African countries is the high level of public debt built up again since they enjoyed US$100bn of debt relief under the Heavily Indebte