ICMA Podcast

ICMA’s Leigh Anne Cooke interviews Julia Rees, Executive Director at Goldman Sachs Asset Management about gender lens investing and how diverse thinking leads to better investment outcomes. The conversation covers women as professionals in gender lens investing, as clients and as asset managers and the potential effect on society as a whole.

ICMA’s Asset Management and Investors Council Chair Robert Parker talks to Arthur Carabia about the unprecedented quantity of negative yielding debt, how fund managers are adapting their behaviour to meet the challenge and the outlook for 2020.

The latest ICMA repo survey sets the baseline for European repo market size at around EUR 7.8 trillion. Survey author, Richard Comotto & ICMA’s Alexander Westphal discuss the survey results, trends and whether or not SFTR reporting will spell the end for the survey after almost 20 years.

ICMA’s Katie Kelly on the transition to risk-free rates (RFRs): looking at progress on the adoption of RFRs in the bond market and the various conventions being used, and a review of possible marked-led solutions for dealing with bonds which already reference LIBOR and will mature after the end of 2021.

ICMA’s Chief Executive Martin Scheck and Nicholas Pfaff, who leads ICMA’s work on green, social and sustainable bond markets with the Green Bond and Social Bond Principles community, discuss growth and diversification in this market over the last 4 years, its future potential and recent regulatory developments including the EU’s proposed Green Bond Standard.

Santiago Braje, Global head of credit trading at ING in a wide ranging discussion with Michael Sansen, Chair of the ICMA Future Leaders on the inevitability of change in credit trading, the shift in focus to technology and data science, new ways of working and the skills now required when building a team. Does radical change always come from outside the bank?

Poppy Jaman, CEO of the City Mental Health Alliance, shares her vision of creating workplaces where mental health is not stigmatised and is treated like physical health, with Leigh-Anne Cooke of ICMA. While raising awareness of mental health is important it is only the first step, CMHA works with firms to create a healthy workplace, with in-house programmes, counsellors, coaches and mental health first aid training. A personal wellbeing toolkit and knowing your stress signature can also be helpful!

As ICMA prepares to launch its first FinTech course in December, course tutor Gail Rolland talks to ICMA’s Gabriel Callsen about the main drivers for electronification of financial markets, the proliferation of solutions from incumbents and start-ups and how regulators are reacting to rapid changes. Gabriel explains what ICMA is doing to help its members by encouraging adoption of common standards and best practice and mapping what is already available in primary secondary and repo markets.

The Bond Connect Scheme has allowed overseas investors to invest in the China interbank bond market (CIBM). ICMA speaks to Julien Martin, General Manager at Bond Connect Company Limited, on how this infrastructure innovation works and how foreign institutional investors can participate.

The European Stability Mechanism’s Senior Quantitative Analyst, Martin Hillebrand, discusses the impact of innovation – particularly in the Primary Fixed Income Markets with Alex Malitsky of TD Securities. He answers questions on the role of competition vs. collaboration in driving change and gives his view on which market participants have to be the origin of the “evolution”. Martin finishes up by discussing the future value of data as a commodity and how its value will change in comparison to factors of value to Fixed Income Markets.