Nigeria is doing Africa's biggest sovereign total return swap loan yet - $5bn against $6.6bn in naira bond collateral, after Senegal's $1.3bn $ Angola's roughly $2.5bn to date. These deals are sweeping African government borrowing as international bond markets have closed. placng.org/i/wp-content...

It also turns out that Korea's president is keeping the MAX WEBER FLAME ALIVE en.sedaily.com/politics/202...

Lebanon's defaulted bonds watch: prices were around 30 cents on the dollar at one point this month. Now about 25 cents or just below (or about where they started the year...)

I was in Paris this weekend, and alongside ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’ the Musée de Cluny just opened a wider exhibition on the history of unicorn art. Which included this tantalising glimpse of how Albrecht Dürer might have approached the My Little Pony franchise.

Definitive proof that every member of the administration has read Tocqueville (but on the Ancien Regime and the Revolution), as Khatami correctly surmised.

“So far, the state — the biggest employer — has continued to pay civil servants and year-end bonuses… Food prices have not been as volatile as in recent months, partly because the currency market has in effect become inactive.” www.ft.com/content/8d63...

Succinct early history of gold in Southern Africa and the role of long-distance connections in this article. The decision by the Fatimid rulers of Egypt to make gold currency their standard measure of value in 969 caused huge demand for gold in southeast Africa: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Market for crude out of Oman (light/sour) is taking the ceasefire prospects *very* seriously.

Speaking of total return swaps, excellent French punnery by this Senegalese newspaper's headline writer today.

Foreign ministry of Egypt (seen as a likely mediator between US and Iran, along with Turkey and Pakistan) says it is “exerting tireless efforts and maintaining intensive contacts with all concerned parties” and "appreciates" Trump's statement today... www.mfa.gov.eg/ar/Ministers...

How Senegal used total return swaps backed with its domestic bonds to tap cash from international lenders despite the fallout from a hidden debt scandal, on terms that haven't been shared with the IMF. It's not the only government using swaps like this... www.ft.com/content/fbd6...

Iran’s domestic inflation and banking crisis hasn’t gone away. Although interestingly, it appears that demand for hard currency has reduced recently as people can’t travel or trade abroad. www.ft.com/content/f84e...

A number of developing countries started what the IEA is suggesting days or weeks ago. (Whether they can enforce those measures is another question.) Maybe not coincidentally, almost no developing countries are IEA members, with IEA-mandated reserves to fall back on... www.ft.com/content/f6eb...

Tripwire forces work. www.ft.com/content/e078...

Nojan Rostami at Aurora sums it up: “The US & Israel have significantly escalated the conflict by assassinating Ali Larijani & attacking Iran’s energy infrastructure in the South Pars area. The operating assumption is that such escalation will hasten the end of the war, but we disagree...” (1/2)

Deleted this because as George notes, it is still a few dollars off 2022! (Management did not zoom in on the sguiggle properly, apologies)

Ah, but Braskem debt is up 9% this month! (From, er, 41 to 45 cents on the dollar.)

The secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping writes a letter to the FT on another crisis emerging out of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz: thousands of stranded seafarers. www.ft.com/content/d45e...

I don’t see why a 15-second sliding context window with the working memory of a goldfish and fake l/t memories should not be subject to short-term capital gains taxes on everything (including unrealized gains) and a 100% inheritance tax.

When Europeans unite through an agreement not to get their feet wet on a naval expedition, it's a Dry Kaiser Bund.

“Harrow is due to open its 15th Asian offshoot in September.” www.ft.com/content/cc7e...

KSA had focused on the Red Sea in naval terms as its economic model moved westward with Vision 2030, and given the Yemen conflict. Do think a longer term effect of the war will be to accelerate the trend of raising more finance at home, to address this kind of failing…

Chevening scholarships are very, very prestigious across southern Africa, to say nothing of elsewhere on the continent (including places that are facing *civil war*). Their beneficiaries are invariably people who want to go back and change their countries. www.ft.com/content/4493...

Senegal is doing the grace period shuffle on bilateral creditors (France in particular) to keep paying its eurobonds. Go up to the 90 day limit as much as possible - try not to go over it. The bondholders are looking at their cross-default clauses to see if missed bilateral payments trigger it...

I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out: www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

Interesting that they have not gone with visual/audio proof of life (or proof of lack of life-changing injuries) for the Supreme Leader...

“I’ve come to terms with the bitter reality: the Islamic republic is resilient… I never thought I’d say this, but if someone from within the regime becomes a real reformer, why not? In the end, we just want peace and welfare.” www.ft.com/content/4e04...

Ghostly Farsi-speaking broadcasts “have been sent out regularly over long-distance short wave radio from a transmitter somewhere in western Europe since the hours after the first US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28...” www.ft.com/content/86c4...

Interesting defence www.ft.com/content/4b61...

Some examples of how the energy crisis is affecting South Asia. 1. Pakistan will close schools for the next two weeks, get government employees to work from home and universities will shift to online learning. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

Incredible scenes in this photo essay & story on Istanbul's hair transplant industry (which is v evident if you transit through the airport). Particularly enjoyed this from Dr Serkan Aygin, who has a luxuriant head of hair AND a Kehinde Wiley work in his clinic: “I myself admit I had a transplant”

I wondered on Friday why Gulf bond markets weren't moving more... well they are moving quite a bit more today, especially in Bahrain, where the long dollar debt is close to an 8% yield. www.ft.com/content/24da...

Venezuela and the US have diplomatic relations again, just two months since Maduro’s downfall. www.state.gov/releases/off...

The Velayat of Donald Trump the Faqih www.axios.com/2026/03/05/i...

Ramaphosa very rarely does setpiece interviews with media, South African or international. Interesting that he is so direct about Trump in this one. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/w...

South Africa's president has given an unusually direct interview about Trump, to the NYT. “I do think the Afrikaner policy is racist... It is that racist sort of demeanor that we want to be able to whittle down so that he can see the truth of the situation.”

SCOOP (from last night, bit late posting): on the eve of Shabana Mahmood’s big migration speech, over 100 Labour MPs sign a letter urging her to rethink new restrictions on the immigration system bit.ly/4cZQxEX

You can still see the end of Gulf sovereign haven status everywhere but their bonds. Abu Dhabi issued a 10-year bond last week at 4.27% or a 25bps spread over Treasuries. (Technically its last bond as an emerging-market issuer, as it moves to a DM index soon.) It's now 4.45% or 33bps.

A president of Argentina (not the current one, to be clear) opened a state of the nation address by misquoting one of my tweets.

Israel’s war aims over Iran now encompass dismantling “the regime’s military infrastructure, including the IRGC.” Not sure of the underlying theory of change for Iran’s politics there. www.ft.com/content/dd07...

The majority of “Dubai expats” come from South Asia and emerging Asia, not just labourers/cleaners but middle class professionals. One of the most important flows of people/remittances across EMs. Fascinating how absent this is from the image war around Dubai. www.ft.com/content/a7bf...

“It undermines the ideological nature underpinning the regime. If he’s selected, it’s because of the conditions right now. People are vying for positions, it’s more open than it looks.” www.ft.com/content/b71e...

Quite something that only about two months separate the most serious protests in the Islamic republic’s history - which pointed to the regime’s approaching systemic failure on a basic, domestically driven, economic level - and the US reverting to ‘arm the Kurds’.

Brief EM FX liquidity update: not good.

If you think oil infrastructure under attack across the Gulf will unleash demand for spare crude outside the region... someone should tell Angola's, Gabon's, and Nigeria's international bondholders. Key bonds for them are marked down (or flat) today.

How's liquidity in EM in this crisis? Egyptian T-bills (with a nominal 1-year yield of ~23%) have been a popular emerging market debt trade exposed to the region. Offshore investors cut exposure by a bit before the war, but didn't (or couldn't?) rush to the exits just yet. www.ft.com/content/25d6...

You are never going to guess which Korean stock went up 24% today while the Kospi and shares like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix plunged.