Growing green bonds could help the environment

The large fine imposed on RBS last week suggests that a ‘scandal’ took place in the banking world over the setting of LIBOR. Yes – there was probably systematic mis-pricing of LIBOR which enabled some traders and some banks to profit at the expense of others. But the LIBOR issue simply highlights a much wider problem in financial markets which is that many ‘prices’ quoted in markets are not market prices at all. Instead they are prices based on computer models, matrix pricing or sheer guesswork, which may or may not produce ‘accurate’ prices. The reason for using computers models and guesswork is that in many financial products there actually are no transactions at all or very few even over periods of some weeks or months and thus no market prices.

Four teams from the English Premier League are taking all the places in the two European finals. But why has the EPL taken so long to dominate European football?

The 32nd floor of the International Trade Centre in Beijing proved to be an excellent venue for the first welcome event for ICMA Centre students joining programmes in Reading in October 2013.