Commerzbank’s chief executive Bettina Orlopp said she didn’t understand the logic behind UniCredit’s surprise low-premium €35bn offer for the bank, which her Italian counterpart Andrea Orcel outlined on Monday.

At least two entities affiliated with the failed bridge loan provider Market Financial Solutions were not audited, according to a source close to the situation, further complicating debt recovery at the London-based lender, which is alleged to have double pledged a large portion of its over £2bn in loans.

Australian Commonwealth government bonds are mixed on the day, after the Reserve Bank of Australia, as generally expected, raised the official cash rate by 25bp to 4.1%, while casting doubts about a quick, follow-through increase in May.  

Thames Water’s main creditor group has amended the terms of its offer to take over the troubled utility, offering to provide significantly more new debt, of up to £6.55bn, up from £2.25bn previously, and an additional £200m of new equity for a total of £3.35bn.

London Stock Exchange Group returned to the US investment-grade market on Monday with a US$3bn bond – its first in two years – as the A3/A rated financial markets infrastructure and data provider sought to refinance debt in what has been one of the busiest months ever for the asset class. 

Euro covered bond supply on Tuesday demonstrated that issuers can get trades done across the curve but new issue concessions are up and subscription rates are down compared with last month.

Drugmaker Novartis came with the US high-grade bond market’s biggest deal on Monday – an US$11bn seven-parter to back its US$12bn acquisition of biopharmaceutical company Avidity Biosciences.

The Province of Alberta got in ahead of expected competition from Canadian peers when it priced a €1.5bn 10-year on Tuesday.

It was supposed to be the year of the CLO, but first, software names that populated many of the assets were hit by AI disruption fears, and then the Middle East war kicked off – freezing activity in the sector.

Two specialist UK mortgage lenders, Enra and Paratus AMC, have reopened the RMBS market following volatility from the war in Iran causing a hiatus.

Switch and MetroNet returned to the US asset-backed primary market last week as digital infrastructure funding surges across credit markets. 

The US-Israeli war with Iran is putting the spotlight on the aviation ABS sector, prompted by concerns about rising fuel costs and air traffic in the Middle East region.

The UK’s strategy for its pioneering retail sovereign green bonds – a world-first at launch back in 2021 – has become even more uncertain with Tuesday’s launch of the first new green Gilt to incorporate a retail offer .

Amundi's sustainability profile is helping to win more institutional mandates as asset owners seek to manage climate-related risks and their transition exposure. 

London Stock Exchange Group's new set of ESG scores and sustainability analytics aims to make data more transparent and comparable, and easier for global financial markets to use and analyse in preparation for greater automation. 

South Africa has created a pioneering credit guarantee vehicle that aims to mobilise as much as US$10bn into the country’s energy, transport and water infrastructure over the next decade.

Nasdaq-listed online travel company MakeMyTrip said it is evaluating an Indian listing.  

After winning a development contract from the US government, Guardian Metal Resources is taking the logical next step of listing in the US via an NYSE American listing that will be accompanied by a roughly US$50m raise.

Walmart-backed Indian digital payments company PhonePe on Monday deferred its planned IPO because of market volatility caused by the war in the Middle East. 

Reliance Industries-owned Jio Platforms plans to files for an IPO as early as the end of this month after the Indian government formally approved revised free-float rules issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, paving the way for large IPOs, people with knowledge of the transaction said. 

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A US$2bn term loan to back the acquisition of asset manager Janus Henderson by Trian Fund Management and General Catalyst is set to launch Tuesday, according to a source.

The debt package backing the US$55bn leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts is expected to be marketed at wider levels than initially anticipated, as volatility triggered by the escalating Middle East war ripples through credit markets.

SoftBank Group is once again pushing the boundaries of the loan market in Asia Pacific with a mammoth financing of up to US$40bn to fund a new investment in OpenAI, in what could become the second-largest bridge facility from the region.

A dramatic but little appreciated rise in the volume of equity total return swaps is being accompanied by an erosion in the margins charged by bank prime finance desks to clients such as hedge funds.

The collapse of Market Financial Solutions follows a familiar and concerning pattern. According to documents submitted to London’s High Court at the commencement of its administration process, MFS may have double-pledged assets, potentially leaving a collateral shortfall of £930m. Loans to MFS totalled £1.16bn, and there was only £230m of “true value” available in the collateral accounts.

It is unbecoming to say “I told you so”, but when it comes to Meta Platforms’ US$27.3bn project bond to fund its Hyperion data centre via private credit shop Blue Owl Capital (and SPV Beignet Investor) the temptation is strong. I wrote in late 2025 that Meta’s decision not to consolidate the debt on its balance sheet sits uneasily with the economic risk that investors have assumed they are taking when they bought the deal in October. And now Meta’s auditor, EY, clearly feels this same tension.

Full-year earnings from European banks – Barclays, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale and UBS – showed them broadly holding market share in the markets’ business, but struggling to capitalise on the upswing in investment banking.