Capital markets take on the energy crisis

Send us Fan MailAlmost a year ago, we discussed the energy crisis for the first time on this podcast — how energy companies were using the capital markets in the face of higher demand for their product and what it meant for inflation. A year on, things are much worse.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a few months later has turbocharged that crisis to the point where this week governments are once again unveiling fiscal support packages to help people and businesses through. We look at where the capital markets might be used to fund the response and whether they can shoulder the burden with shrinking central bank monetary support.But we also revisit what the energy companies — and others linked to the sector — are doing now that they are facing extreme swings in the price for gas, what it means for their finances and what they need from the capital markets to navigate through it. And speaking of volatile markets, we discuss how one investment bank has recalibrated its primary bond business in credit markets in a way it thinks will help it to act more quickly and decisively just when such qualities may make the difference not just between winning a bond mandate or losing it but in being able to execute it without losing your shirt in the process.