JP Morgan turned in a stellar start to the year driven by its best ever first quarter results in fixed income trading, equities trading, lending and advisory.

Foreign direct investment in Ukraine could hit US$145bn in the next decade and international financial institutions could attract up to US$59bn in private co-investment, which could help meet more than one-third of its hefty reconstruction bill, Citigroup estimates.

Financial regulators need to be alert to the risk in government bond markets from a small number of major investors using high leverage and similar strategies, which could result in "a disorderly unwinding of positions", the head of the Financial Stability Board has warned.

Gerry Keefe, HSBC's head of banking for Europe and Americas, has resigned to take up a role outside banking, adding to several senior departures since Europe's biggest bank started scaling back and restructuring its investment bank 18 months ago.

With the situation in the Middle East at least no worse, FIG issuers jumped into Wednesday’s resulting risk-on market with a plethora of deals that straddled the various asset classes, building on what had been an encouraging session the previous day.

The European high-yield market saw its busiest session since March on Wednesday, with three deals, including a tap, set to price while another two deals are scheduled to price later this week.

Italy collected record demand on Wednesday for its first syndication since the outbreak of the Iran war, with the 10-year BTP burnishing its reputation for attracting huge investor interest.

Incheon International Airport tightened spectacularly on Tuesday on its first return to the US dollar bond market since its debut in 2021, as improved market sentiment encouraged investors to pile into the Aa2/AA (Moody's/S&P) rated trade.

UK specialist lender Lendco is closing in on a successful return to the securitisation market with its latest buy-to-let transaction, as conditions in UK RMBS continue to demonstrate resilience despite ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.

European securitisation markets are showing early signs of a post-Easter revival, with a debut transaction from Advanzia Bank reopening primary markets, market participants said. =

KKR hit the commercial mortgage-backed security market last week to refinance an office tower in San Francisco that was once the headquarters for Dropbox, which has vacated the premises and been replaced by a roster of other corporate tenants.

The European Banking Authority said in a Q&A posted on its website that a credit rating can only be used to calculate regulatory risk weights if it is publicly disclosed, clarifying an issue debated by market practitioners. 

South Africa’s FirstRand Group has leapfrogged multilateral development and commercial banks by becoming the first market player to replicate the World Bank’s outcome bond structure .

Sustainable finance will play a central role in raising hundreds of billions of pounds of private capital over the next decade to fund the UK government's ambitious growth and infrastructure plans and help meet its net-zero targets. 

Global tech hyperscalers are exploring voluntary nature and biodiversity credits in the UK and Europe to offset the environmental impact of data centres, as well as mandatory credits to meet the UK's Biodiversity Net Gain regulation. 

The World Bank has stepped up its revived programme of Italian retail investor-targeted borrowing with its debut transaction through UniCredit. The Triple A rated development lender, which sourced lightly structured deals as large as US$668m and US$397m in the country during the 2010s, passing US$1bn in 2016 alone, issued €21.386m of fixed-rate callable notes through the Italian/German bank.

Revolution Medicines raised an upsized US$2bn late Tuesday from a two-part sale of common stock and convertible debt, double the amount it was seeking and among the largest-ever equity-linked financings by a US biotechnology company.

Shenzhen-listed Eoptolink Technology, a maker of high-speed optical transceivers and components, is considering a Hong Kong listing which could raise at least US$3bn, said people with knowledge of the matter.

Norwegian state-owned oil and gas company Equinor has cut its stake in Oslo-listed renewables business Scatec via a NKr1.61bn (US$171.4m) accelerated bookbuild on Monday. 

Revolution Medicines is seeking to raise US$1bn from a two-part sale of stock and convertible debt, launching the deal on Monday evening after it unveiled blockbuster Phase III data and giving investors an extra day to digest the results.

Ford Motor Co has entered into US$21bn of amended loans.

Two banks are expected to underwrite a loan of around US$900m-equivalent to partially refinance a debt package for private equity firm Warburg Pincus that backed its privatisation of Chinese online classifieds platform 58.com from Nasdaq in 2020.

Direct lenders are preparing to gather for an annual private credit conference at a critical moment for the industry, as retail investors seek to pull large sums of capital from the asset class and some fund managers cap share redemptions.

Citigroup chief executive Jane Fraser manages a team of rivals who might aspire to her job. Competition is healthy but appointing a new president as a deputy could help Fraser deliver the next phase of her growth plan.

It is unusual for a listed company to buy income-bearing securities of a peer as a treasury decision. In orthodox corporate finance, surplus capital is meant to do one of three things: fund projects that clear the hurdle rate, preserve liquidity, or be returned to shareholders. It is not normally redeployed into another company exposed to much the same trade, especially at a lower yield than the investing company pays on its own stock.

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.