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Articles by Jon Hay
One reserve number cannot answer three nonprofit board questions
INSIGHT Oct 15, 2026 7 min read Nonprofit organization finance departments and boards often rely on a single measure of financial health: months of reserves. The problem is that this one number is often being asked to answer several fundamentally different questions, and never quite satisfies everyone. Three core questions often arise during board meetings and budget discussions: How much loss can we absorb? How do we handle cash timing gaps? How do we protect the organization’s long-term future?
I’m not *that* French
French government bonds got bodied by this week’s global sell-off, as France-specific fears spiked the already heady cocktail of alarms driving yields higher everywhere. The OAT-Bund spread was knocked right off the pitch, to 113bp. Unfortunate timing for French banks and companies, which were busy packing in all the funding they could before negotiations over next year’s national Budget begin in October — an event that has been glowing red on the risk events calendar all year.
Friendship has limits
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Dreams of an AI slowdown won't keep the bond market safe
Earlier this week, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei issued a public call for the pace of artificial intelligence development to be slowed down to allow risk prevention time to catch up. Fellow AI zealots Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of Tesla were quick to voice their agreement. On the face of it, it seems these 21st century Robert Oppenheimers have woken up to the fact that their technological breakthroughs could spell the end of humanity.
Squirrel on squirrel violence
The plight of the red squirrel, native to the UK, is well known — pushed out by the chunkier, more vigorous grey variety imported from the US. Is there a parrallel with the European corporate bond market we wonder, given the vast amounts of US corporate bond issuance taking place this year in euros, sterling and Swiss francs?
Rating agencies vs AI — who will look clever?
The major credit rating agencies are facing a credibility crunch point. They are increasingly being asked to rate borrowers intimately bound up with the dizzying artificial investment boom. That includes a wide array of secured data centre financings, including those classified in the US into commercial mortgage-backed securities and asset-backed securities.
ING hires two to expand insurance coverage
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The mysterious case of the disappearing investors
The rate at which investors are dropping out of order books in Europe's corporate bond market when issuers tighten the pricing on their deals in syndication is rising. We examine why, what borrowers are doing to counter it and discuss just how important order book attrition is in the first place. Meanwhile, there are signs that investors are tiring of the vast slugs of debt being pushed their way to finance the AI revolution.
Don’t fear attrition, watch the spread
These are strange times in bond markets. The last six months have turned the interest rate cycle — never a very reliable oscillator — on its head. Not everything is President Trump’s fault of course — but this kind of is. Since the US attacked Iran on February 28, 10 year government bond yields have risen 85bp in the US, 73bp in Germany and 100bp in the UK. Yet despite an inflationary, energy-disrupting war with no end in sight, non-government bonds have remained astonishingly healthy.
Blanchard takes helm of CA CIB global markets
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KKR poaches senior DCM banker from US firm
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When pricing fails, finance must speak
Financial markets are not shy of making their anxieties felt — in theory. When Kwasi Kwarteng as UK chancellor of the exchequer gave his infamous fiscally expansive mini-Budget in September 2022, the 10 year Gilt yield spiked nearly 100bp in days. US president Donald Trump’s global tariff splurge on April 2, 2025 pushed European crossover credit default swap spreads out by a similar amount in a week — a 30% widening. Investment grade spreads, proportionally, weakened even more.
When pricing fails, finance must speak
Financial markets are not shy of making their anxieties felt — in theory. When Kwasi Kwarteng as UK chancellor of the exchequer gave his infamous fiscally expansive mini-Budget in September 2022, the 10 year Gilt yield spiked nearly 100bp in days. US president Donald Trump’s global tariff splurge on April 2, 2025 pushed European crossover credit default swap spreads out by a similar amount in a week — a 30% widening. Investment grade spreads, proportionally, weakened even more.
OQEP extends $500m bridge loan after management change and ratings
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Markets bask in bullishness as record heat scorches harvests
Capital markets have barely reacted to the unprecedented heatwaves sweeping Europe and north America, even though they give a foretaste of much worse disruption to come. The markets’ seeming insouciance is partly down to investors struggling to know how to price climate risk, specialists say — but also reflects a wider indifference or lack of understanding in society.
Record temperatures, record bonuses
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Markets bask in bullishness as record heat scorches harvests
Capital markets have barely reacted to the unprecedented heatwaves sweeping Europe and north America, even though they give a foretaste of much worse disruption to come. The markets’ seeming insouciance is partly down to investors struggling to know how to price climate risk, specialists say — but also reflects a wider indifference or lack of understanding in society.
Private finance banker leaves NatWest
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All eyes on the hyperscalers
Europe's corporate bond market is fretting over increased bond issuance from hyperscalers in the autumn. These US tech giants, when they come to the market, come big. And with their spreads having widened lately, more storied issuers in the market are worried that it will impact their funding costs too. We examine what could drive such a huge slug of issuance in the next couple of months and whether those tightly priced European companies really have anything to worry about.
Another ABF lender collapses, development banks max out private placements
Barely six months after the controversial collapse of Market Financial Solutions, another UK specialist lender has tumbled. The failure of Amplifi is another blow to the banks and other institutions that fund the specialist lenders through asset-backed finance. But the devil, or perhaps in this case the angel, is in the detail. For the two situations have stark differences. We explain why the ABF industry is taking Amplifi's collapse in its stride.
HSBC picks one internal, one hire for US corporate DCM
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HSBC rebuilds Middle East DCM, puts sustainable finance head there
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The bully of the curve
The three month euro/dollar basis swap was traditionally called the bully of the curve because it controlled the rest, but there is no doubt who’s the boss now — dirty old oil. As the US and Iran traded blows, Houthi threats to close the Gulf of Aden made oil traders freak out this week. Their alarm seized bond markets globally, pushing French and German yields to decade highs and Treasuries to an 18 month peak.
UBS hires sponsors banker from BofA, promotes three others
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The meaning of a basis point
A basis point might always be the same quantity, but is it a lot or a little? It depends whom you ask, and when. For supranational, sovereign and agency bond issuers in the dollar market, 1.7bp over Treasuries and 1.9bp over are two different things. Records keep falling as SSAs price ever closer to Treasuries. Last week the International Finance Corp got to 1.7bp — and it was clearly because its $2bn green bond attracted green-mandated investors, more willing to tolerate spread norms being shaved.
CPPIB exits Elis as Thrivest sells down CrediaBank stake
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GlobalCapital Lifetime Achievement Award: Gary Admans
Gary Admans has been one of the most admired practitioners in the corporate bond market over the past 25 years. As head of capital markets and liquidity at BP, Admans was, in the words of one banker, “the standout reference point for UK corporate funding”. Between 2000 and 2025 BP issued $192bn of bonds, making it Europe’s sixth biggest corporate issuer and the world’s largest in the oil and gas sector. Admans was at the centre of it all.
Brewing a bromance between Burnham and bonds
Will Andy Burnham outfox the bond market when he becomes UK prime minister? Click here to listen to the latest episode of the GlobalCapital Podcast. Andy Burnham looks set to become the next UK prime minister, following the resignation of Keir Starmer on Monday. But how will the new man in 10 Downing Street get along with the bond market? One of his predecessors, Liz Truss, managed fixed income relations so badly, it cost her her job and made her term the shortest in the history of the office.
Burnham needs a cause — two would please the bond market
Like four of the five previous UK prime ministers, Keir Starmer was forced to resign, rather than being voted out. Last time — Liz Truss in 2022 — it was the bond market that did the forcing. Gilt investors hated her fiscally expansive mini-Budget, and she was toast. With Starmer, no one can convincingly explain why, with a huge majority in Parliament, he had to go. It will be debated by historians for decades. The City was clearly not the culprit.
Mizuho promotes Zamorano to run CIB Europe
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UK bond trading enters new age of transparency as consolidated tape is launched
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The waiting games: ME issuance, digital capital markets and French covered bonds
The Iran war has kept the Middle East's bond issuers largely at bay but with the path to peace now clearer, issuance conditions have improved. But even this might not be enough to tempt borrowers back to the primary bond market en masse. We discover why. We also analyse a new report on the digitalisation of wholesale finance and discuss why capital markets might be one of the last bits of finance to go digital.
Primary capital markets could be among last to adopt DLT, report finds
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IFC brings second emerging market CLO, faster and tighter
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The ESN has landed
Bpifrance achieved a world first this week, pricing the inaugural European Secured Note. The deal was a success but it has taken about a decade to get the product from concept to market. The question is now where next for ESNs? This twist on a covered bond has clear applications as a capital market instrument that can help fund the real economy but it could be argued that its future lies in the hands of the regulators and how they choose to treat it.
On DLT, regulators could bring order — or disruption
The movement to shift capital markets to operating on blockchains has many enthusiastic promoters. None of them can explain how it will actually come to pass. There is a crowded field, with many players of different kinds moving about pursuing various actions, but they are still far from forming orderly patterns whose development can be clearly predicted. The easiest actors to read are the regulators, central banks and legal authorities.
Hyperscaler hybrids — wait till the cycle turns
Over the last 12 months, the US hyperscale technology companies have borrowed huge sums to finance their gargantuan artificial intelligence capex plans. So far, they have relied mainly on senior bonds, with some also turning to the equity market. The scale of the investment boom inevitably raises the question: could hybrid capital bonds play a part?
Schneider’s €800m convertible for buyback wins strong long-only bid
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US Treasury sued over Asian Development Bank energy rules
The US Treasury is facing a lawsuit demanding that it reveal whether it used its influence to ensure the Asian Development Bank would continue to allow financing of some uses of fossil fuels. The ADB adopted a revised Energy Policy and a list of Prohibited Investment Activities in November, which dismayed environmentalists by allowing scope for the support of projects with high greenhouse gas emissions, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.
Armin Peter joins Dubai regulator as head of markets
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Par from the Maduro crowd?
Venezuela's debt restructuring is getting underway, nine years after the country defaulted and just months after the US removed its former president, Nicolas Maduro. The amount of debt involved is expected to be huge but no one outside of Venezuela knows quite how much. That's not the only unusual thing about the exercise.
Latour brings twin block trades in Securitas, Assa Abloy
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SSAs and US Treasuries: crossing the final frontier
Bond issuance from supranational and agency issuers is rampant. And not only are volumes high but the bonds are flying too, attracting large order books, being priced with little if any issue premium and then performing in the secondary market. There has been a notable resurgence in dollar issuance in particular, even as issuers price within a hair's breadth of US Treasury yields.
Public Power Corp increases equity raise after strong demand
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Conditions are right to make development finance boom
The African Development Bank’s first synthetic securitization in 2018 and first hybrid capital issue in 2024 were showered with capital markets industry awards for innovation. Rightly so — each opened the door for multilateral development banks to use a new technique. Securitization can take risk off their balance sheets, freeing up capital for new lending; hybrid capital creates new equity in the eyes of accountants and rating agencies.
ACS raises €1.8bn for capex from €2bn block trade
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Starmer, strife and sterling bonds
Larry, the resident mouser of 10 Downing Street, is not the only one hoping to get through the door soon. But the question of who'll be filling his bowl with Whiskas in a few months' time is one that is occupying the bond market The mice turned on the cat in UK politics this week, causing volatility in the bond market and a headache for issuers of sterling bonds.
Uzbek state gets $604m as fund lists after huge marketing effort
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IFC’s first synthetic securitization powers up EM trade finance
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CEO changes at Spring Cash, the US lender backed by GB Bank
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