Ben St. Clair

The fledgling market for carbon emissions offsets is dreaming big – of a world in which global financial institutions champion funding for communities on the front lines of the climate crisis and help companies elsewhere clean up their hard-to-reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Banks offering deal contingent hedges are divided over whether it is appropriate to offload the risk of the underlying transactions falling through on to hedge funds.

Despite the growth in the private credit sector in recent years, participants have shown little appetite to use credit default swaps to hedge-out risk in their sizeable loan books – and the drawn-out deliberations over Vue’s CDSs could give them another reason to stay away.

At the next meeting of the influential committee in charge of judging bond defaults, two seats are likely to remain empty.

As William Shakespeare never quite put it: “What’s in a name? That which we call a trading venue by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Attempts to position credit default swaps as a tool for meeting environmental, social and governance objectives in fixed income portfolios have been slow to catch on, though traders are optimistic that products once described as “unethical” by the Vatican have a crucial role to play in green transition.

Financial firms are developing new services for the carbon credit market, to try and improve the way that voluntary credits are traded. But the sector remains dogged by a lack of standards, which is feeding scepticism about whether a secondary market for voluntary carbon credits can – or should – reach the required scale.

Sanctions prohibiting the trading of Russian corporate debt threaten to undermine credit default swaps written on the companies concerned, and may force traders to rely on dealer estimates to settle contracts.

Firms looking to fund environmental, social and governance projects are turning to ESG-friendly repurchase agreements – green repo – and notably to the type of trade that sidesteps the need to issue a green bond or loan.

With sustainability front-of-mind, asset managers are starting to introduce environmental, social and governance considerations into their choice of trading counterparties. And as managers begin to factor ESG metrics into their counterparty reviews, some are going so far as to limit their interactions with dealers that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

During a recorded conversation, the star witness in the Chandra Levy murder case made a series of boastful claims. Armando Morales bragged about shooting gang rivals, obtaining hand grenades and making prison shanks out of melted foam cups.

On August 19, 2014 lawyers for Robert and Laura Lemle met in a courtroom in Lower Manhattan. Litigation is a fact of life in the New York real estate business, which the Lemle family had been involved in for almost a century. But this suit didn’t involve disgruntled tenants, contractors or partners.

In a city of multibillion-dollar Manhattan skyscrapers, single-family home construction in the outer boroughs often goes unnoticed. But even the small-fry homebuilding market has its titans, and The Real Deal set out to find them.

When the Ciampa Organization began developing multifamily apartments in the 1960s, New York’s housing market was on the way down. In the decade following, the city attempted to stimulate development with various tax incentive programs. The family-owned Ciampa took notice, and it’s been a hallmark of its business strategy ever since.

The long-awaited completion of the Second Avenue subway is expected to lead to rising rents on the Upper East Side – a headache for some tenants, but a boon for the area’s landlords.

In September, while other Fordham University students finished class or relaxed before a Friday night out, sophomore Olivia Greenspan headed to the garden. Tucked away behind Fordham’s Faculty Memorial Hall and the building housing Fordham University Press, the garden is a far cry from the New York Botanical Garden across the street. But to her and many others who spend time there, this garden — St. Rose’s Garden — is one of the university’s hidden gems.

Like voters across the country, Fordham’s College Republicans are torn. In March, an email from then President Sebastian Albrecht, FCRH ’17, to current and prospective club members described members’ concerns with the possible nomination of Donald J. Trump.

When Erika Schwartz submitted a budget request for Smart Woman Securities last semester, she thought the club would get the funding they had received the previous year. Instead, the Gabelli senior and chief operating officer learned that the club had received less than two thirds of what it had requested for its annual initiation dinner.