Volumes in equity options that expire the same day they’re traded have hit a new record this month as more institutional investors have turned to the ultra-short-dated derivatives to shield themselves against the market fallout from the war in Iran.

Standard Chartered has hired Ole Matthiessen from Deutsche Bank to lead a new global transaction services and digital assets team in its corporate and investment bank. 

Bank of America has set up a private capital M&A group within its global mergers and acquisitions business to provide "differentiated and tailored advice" to its private equity clients. 

HSBC has appointed its first chief AI officer, tasked with leading artificial intelligence adoption across the firm, to join a small group of banks to appoint a specific AI leader as the industry ramps up use with the twin goal of creating efficiencies and getting an edge.

Investors warmly welcomed a rare insurance company senior bond issuance from Talanx on Tuesday, with the €500m seven-year note ending up four times subscribed, as FIG issuers signed off a turbulent first quarter of 2026 with a late salvo of deals. 

Packaging company Sealed Air widened pricing on Monday on an over US$7bn debt sale across dollars and euros to back its takeover by private equity firm CD&R as investors continue to express concerns about the sponsor and potential cost hikes due to the Iran war.

FIG and corporate euro bond bankers expect to see busy months ahead in April and May following the disruption to supply in March from the Iran war and the volatile rates backdrop.

Eurofima is sounding out the strength of the bid for a possible 20-year euro green bond, which would mark the first non-sovereign public sector issuer to venture that far out the curve since the outbreak of the Iran war, IFR data show.

EdgeConneX has become a casualty of the recent volatility in the European securitisation market after Fitch downgraded the class A2 notes of the US data centre operator's debut European deal just a week after it priced. 

Nonbank issuers in Australia have been navigating a challenging RMBS market with long execution times that leave them particularly vulnerable during the current heightened volatility.   

Securitisation offers a promising route to fill an over US$100bn funding gap to build data centres in the Asia Pacific, but this solution is still a while away, according to market participants

How do you get a £500m-plus deal done when the Middle East war is making investors skittish and making it more difficult to sell larger transactions? Together Financial Services went the time-worn way with its latest RMBS transaction: in essence, after building a book behind closed doors, it hiked the spread slightly. 

Mexico has set a new benchmark for sovereign sustainable finance with an updated framework that accommodates an unprecedented array of ESG labels – including badges like biodiversity, nature and resilience/adaptation – while also integrating the country’s sustainable taxonomy.

The UK's influential Transition Finance Council has published an exposure draft of its Transition Finance Guidelines, which are designed to assess the credibility of companies' transition plans and scale up transition financing globally. 

More European companies have adaptation and resilience plans in place than their global peers but progress is at a very early stage and none of the plans are advanced, according to research by S&P. 

French private debt and equity firm Eurazeo's Planetary Boundaries fund has secured more than half of its €750m target, which it intends to keep in place as fundraising continues. 

Stockholm-listed Fasadgruppen saw takeup of 95.3% for its SKr504m (US$53m) rights issue.

Yesway has revived its long-delayed Nasdaq IPO by publicly filing documents for what is expected to be a US$300m-plus offering.

Alamar Biosciences filed for a Nasdaq IPO on Friday to support sales of its fast-growing protein analysis platform, moving toward the public markets just months after closing a late-stage private round. 

Spice maker McCormick has commitments for a US$15.7bn bridge loan in place to support its approximately US$44.8bn combination with the foods business of Unilever. 

AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave has signed an up to US$8.5bn delayed draw term loan that is to primarily be used to finance capital expenditure, including the acquisition of GPU servers and related infrastructure. 

(Recasts headline and first three paragraphs, adds bridge loan details)

Syndicated lending in G3 currencies in Asia Pacific (ex-Japan) plunged to a five-year low in the first three months of 2026, posting the lowest quarterly tally since the coronavirus pandemic as the month-long conflict in the Middle East weighed heavily on global financial markets.  

Private credit mishaps are coming at us with such speed and intensity that many of the stories are blurring into one. But rather than the private credit crisis dragging banks down, it might give them an opportunity to play offensively in this space.

The easiest way to hide a credit loss is not to deny it. It is to say it has not yet arrived. That was one of the quiet accounting failures exposed by the global financial crisis: losses were often recognised too late, only after the damage was obvious. IFRS 9 was supposed to fix that by forcing lenders to book expected credit losses earlier, using forward-looking judgment rather than waiting for the wreckage.

I played rugby as a schoolboy. I wasn’t too bad, playing for East Yorkshire a few times at under-16 level. My position was scrum-half, which meant I had a lot of the ball. And being in the thick of things, one soon learns to be nimble and quick-thinking to avoid being crushed by rampaging forwards.

Investment banks continue to expect strong first-quarter revenues. On Tuesday, Citigroup guided to mid-teens year-on-year growth in investment banking and markets revenues, and Bank of America guided to double-digit growth for both business lines. A few weeks ago, JP Morgan provided a similar upbeat message.