Macaskill on Markets

A US climate bill filled with green credits will create business for banks and provide relief from the backlash against ESG products.

West Virginia state treasurer Riley Moore has opened another front in a campaign by Republican officials in the US against banks that promote ESG policies.

HSBC Asset Management’s head of responsible investing has had it up to here with consultants and regulators lecturing him on climate change risk.

The aftermath of a £250m accounting scandal that led to a £2bn drop in the value of its shares might not seem like the best time for UK retailer Tesco to think about ramping up its activity in banking.

It’s hard out there for a short, even with a multi-year credit and equity rally looking increasingly fatigued.

Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman’s desperate attempt to push down the stock of nutritional supplement provider Herbalife provides the highest profile recent example of the challenges faced by short sellers.

There is a vogue among senior investment bankers to look for a switch to a job with one of the private equity firms that are morphing into shadow finance players with an appetite for assets of all kinds.

The partial withdrawal by Barclays from investment banking is starting to look disorderly – more retreat from Moscow than Dunkirk-style retrenchment.

Summer is upon us and with it the lull of the Second Great Moderation. The First Great Moderation, in the half decade to 2008, was a disappointment, given that it ended with the worst market crisis since the crash of 1929 and a global recession.

Deutsche Bank finally managed to sell its Las Vegas casino – The Cosmopolitan – a few days before announcing a €8 billion capital raising that it will use to double down on its bet that it can make a viable return from a full-service global fixed-income business.

The Las Vegas casino that Deutsche Bank finally managed to sell just before announcing its most recent capital increase – The Cosmopolitan – uses the catchphrase “Just the right amount of wrong” to tempt customers.

Apple has reopened the market for jumbo bonds as it steps up its share buyback plans and other borrowers are likely to follow suit as mergers and acquisition activity revives.

If Pimco did manage to score a $375 million profit by securing an allocation of $8 billion of the Verizon $49 billion bond that delivered roughly $2.5 billion of paper gains to investors after it was launched last September, then it was a rare bright spot in a tough year for Mark Kiesel, global head of corporate bonds at the fund management firm.

The decision by Mike Cavanagh, co-CEO of investment banking at JPMorgan, to move to private equity firm Carlyle should not be viewed as a surprise. Cavanagh has taken himself out of the running for the role of successor to JPMorgan group CEO Jamie Dimon in order to make a late entry in the stakes to follow Carlyle founders David Rubenstein and Bill Conway.

Will Blythe join Bambi and Godzilla at Mercuria to create a new commodities trading dream team? The fate of Blythe Masters, head of commodities at JPMorgan, is in the spotlight now that the sale of the bank’s physical commodities business to Mercuria for $3.5 billion has been confirmed.

Emerging markets have bounced back impressively from an early-year slump that had threatened to turn into a full-blown crisis. But there are still plenty of questions about prospects for emerging nations and related banking revenues.

Vikram Pandit, the former Citigroup CEO, who was ousted in 2012, is casting his net wide as he looks for ways to stay busy.

The hedge fund industry is coming off another year of substantial underperformance to market benchmarks in bizarrely rude health. Total assets in the industry rose to $2.01 trillion in December to set a new record total above the previous peak of $1.95 trillion in June 2008, according to data firm Eurekahedge. Other monitors put the current total as high as $2.41 trillion.