MTN Leak

The MTN market is just full of kind-hearted people, isn’t it? Not to mention physically fit. And apparently they don’t come any kinder and fitter than the Crédit Agricole desk, where the employees are all gripped by marathon fever.

Wales’ favourite MTN market export — Ben Powell — is following in the footsteps of his famous forefathers: Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton, and let’s not forget Shirley Bassey and Tom Jones, and heading across the Atlantic to Hollywood (well, not actually Tinseltown but Washington, DC, the Hollywood of the MTN markets) to join International Finance Corp’s funding team.

Italian gastronomy displays a cornucopia of red and pink ingredients: tomatoes, chillies, peppers, salami, ham, red wine, Bolognese sauce...

MTNers, Leak is very sorry: there is some bad news that we have to share with you all. No, Chris Jones hasn’t installed his own karaoke machine outside HSBC’s offices in the middle of Canary Wharf. No, Smit Acharya hasn’t bought a Harley Davidson. And no, Taiwanese life insurers haven’t decided that they want all issuers to buy back their callable zeroes.

The great and the good of the MTN market descended on Chelsea’s Bluebird for the otherworldly Icelandic festival of Thorrablot last week, courtesy of Islandsbanki, all in the name of London-Reykjavik relations.

Reader, treasure this edition of EuroWeek. It may be the last time you hear from Leak.

Here at Leak towers we have well and truly learnt our lesson. After enduring weeks of our mocking over his love of Domino’s Pizza, Deutsche Bank’s Filippo Ginanni finally wrought sweet revenge in the bars of Shoreditch, filling us with cocktail after cocktail, Thai food, and then more cocktails. "Ouch" is probably the best word to describe last Friday.

"I have defeated the private placement market with my words. Imagine what I could have done with my fire-breathing fists."

MTN dealers. They deal in, well, MTNs, right? Wrong! At least according to the French school of thought. Crédit Agricole, for example: they don’t sell debt instruments, they sell dreams.

History was made in the MTN market this week, Leak is delighted to reveal. Deutsche Bank’s desk finally got what it had been craving for many years. This was the magical week when Filippo Ginanni invited his colleagues to his super-pad for dinner.

Chris Hill’s time at BNP Paribas clearly came back to haunt him on Tuesday. The BarCap recruit, finding himself confronted with a wine list full of fancy French names, found himself unable for quite some time to speak entirely in his native tongue. Luckily, Toby Croasdell (now better known as "monsieur le grand fromage") was around to translate for his colleague.

When’s-a your-a Do-mino day, Filippo Ginanni? Hang on, shouldn’t that be Dolmio, at the very least? Well, not according to the MTN team at Deutsche Bank, which Leak was lucky enough to lunch with last Friday.