This week our family got stranded in Oslo. Our flight home on Monday was canceled due to the air traffic control malfunction in the UK. We made the best of it with an impromptu city break, and I can certainly think of worse places than The Tiger City to be
Greetings from Oslo. This week, I have been traveling in the Nordics, returning to one of my favourite parts of the world to meet clients and friends in Sweden and Norway. Whilst the UK and the rest of Europe enjoy the last of the summer sun on their holiday travels,
Bonds are the unsung heroes (and sometimes villains) of financial markets. For the average investor, stocks are easy to understand. They’re familiar with the companies that issue them, and the link between corporate performance and share prices is intuitive. Bonds are a different proposition entirely. They are perceived as
Another month, another Bank of England rate hike. Since the BoE’s meaty 50bp rate rise in June – following a period of complacency earlier this year – inflation data has relented somewhat. The Monetary Policy Committee opted for a less aggressive 25bp rise at its August meeting, taking rates to 5.
A fascinating story doing the rounds this week focused on an academic assault upon tech’s latest darling as it was reported that ChatGPT was getting “dumber”. I found this episode a super interesting development, and it got me thinking about AI, but also about the painstaking process of developing
Interest rates have gone up considerably over the past 12 months, especially in the UK. And the headlines are shouting about the impact on borrowers, particularly mortgage holders. Yet, on the other side of the balance sheet, savers don’t seem to be getting a commensurate uplift on their savings
The speech delivered this week by British Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to City executives at Mansion House in London got a lot of people thinking about pension reform. In his speech, Hunt set out a list of changes that he intends to make to reinvigorate the UK’s financial services sector,
This week we attended the Global Capital Bond Awards dinner, where for the third year in a row, we won two awards: * “Best Technology Platform for the SSA Primary Bond Market” * “Best Technology Platform for the FIG Primary Bond Market” The Global Capital Bond awards are probably the premier industry
London’s Tech Week is always a opportunity to assess the strengths of the capital’s tech push. Prime Minister Sunak has made all the right noises in recent months about the UK’s need to focus on future technologies. His speech to kick off Tech Week specifically focused on
This week on the blog, Rainer Wagner – who flies the flag for Origin from Frankfurt – gives his take on the state of the EU’s Capital Markets Union project. Schengen has become a politically charged word. But for me, it has personal significance. I grew up near the border to
This week on the blog, Origin’s Co-founder and CTO Robert Taylor shares his thoughts on Blockchain and its (lack of) application to the capital markets. Once touted as the spotlight DLT project, the ASX have now firmly killed their blockchain ambitions, having reduced the scope significantly last year. I
This week, Volvo Treasury AB successfully completed a dual tranche, €1 billion syndicated benchmark bond issuance via the Origin platform. This transaction is the first truly syndicated bond issuance on Origin, bringing together multiple banks and law firms to collaborate. Our platform was used as part of the documentation process,