Nomura, Asia's global investment bank, today announced a working partnership with Marco Patuano, who will act as a Senior Advisor. Based in Milan, Mr. Patuano will provide market advice across Nomura's European investment banking business with a focus on Italy.

Solactive announces the launch of the Solactive ARC ESG Big Data Europe Index, which was developed with ARC Responsible Investment earlier this year, and is designed to track the performance of European stocks with a high consensus Environmental, Governance, and Social (ESG) Score, based on data provided by OWL Analytics and Investment Research.

Volatility regimes are decisive for most investment approaches, particularly hedge funds. For both top down players (CTAs, Global Macro, FI Sovereign Arb.) and bottom-up strategies (L/S Equity, Event Driven, Credit Arb.), volatility deeply influence their universe and the trendiness of opportunities.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has launched an open-ended fund for central bank investments in green bonds. Responding to a growing demand for climate-friendly investments among official institutions, the BIS's green bond fund initiative helps central banks to incorporate environmental sustainability objectives in the management of their reserves.

Bond market performance in 2019 has been dominated by a theme of central banks pivoting towards easier policy. In particular, the US Federal Reserve has signalled potential interest rate cuts, marking a meaningful shift compared with the hiking cycle of the past three years (Figure 1). This has been a driving force behind double digit returns in many sectors of the bond market in the first half of the year.