Crowd trouble in the capital markets

Send us Fan MailFrom bonds to equities, issuers are finding it harder to raise capital. Inflation, invasion and disruption, not to mention rising interest rates, are shortening the times when the financial markets are stable enough to allow issuers to come to the market with deals. We look into what that means for the rest of the year in bond and equity markets and discover that it is forcing issuers to crowd into the same, smaller windows for new issuance than they have been used to for the last few years. We highlight the problems that will cause some of them.We also discuss what may be something of a Martin Luther moment in socially responsible investing. Stuart Kirk, HSBC’s head of responsible investing, boldly went and named his criticisms with the ESG finance industry at an industry event recently. His critique has caused a furore in a part of the capital markets where there is often too cosy an alliance of — at least in terms of what is said publicly — bland, good intentions. We discuss whether Kirk had a point — after all, he is no global warming denier or an outsider to financial markets — and how the ESG finance sector and HSBC should respond.