IMF Spring Meetings 2026 Report

In our final episode of Season 5, we explore the outlook for the next financial year, drawing insights from the international community at the recent IMF gathering in Washington. We discuss blended finance, new currents in climate finance and the changing flow of international capital from established markets and developing economies. Join our regular hosts Andrew Keith Walker and Christian Rossler with Jean-Marie Masse, visiting scholar at the IMF, and Jan Willems, Head of Global Markets, Clearstream.

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Season Finale From Washington

SPEAKER_03 0:06

Welcome back to the GFF Podcast and to our grand finale. Yes, our grand finale of season five. What a season it has been. We've managed to have an anniversary event that we've celebrated every episode. And this one is no different. And we'll come to that uh in a second. But first of all, of course, I need to welcome back the man uh without whom there is no GFF podcast. Of course, the uh BFF of GFF, Mr. Christian Russler, fresh back from the IMF Spring Meetings in Washington, which is of course the theme of uh this month's show. Christian, welcome back.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Yes, Andrew. It's uh great to be back and uh have a lot of uh uh news from uh from Washington. So I'm happy to share it with you and um and also with Jan.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

Yes, Jan Willems, head of uh Products for Global Markets, a clear stream, and John Marie Mass. We've got the Washington crew with us at last. But Christian, I want to start with you because there is big news on the topic of blended bonds, new financial instruments that are addressing climate issues and can be adapted in lots of different

What A Blended Bond Is

SPEAKER_03 1:08

scenarios. Why don't you take us through that?

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Yeah, I think um when one speaks about blended finance, one needs first to to a little bit explain uh what it is. It blends actually private capital with public uh funds. So this is uh the idea of the blended bond. So it's to to actually uh get um merging market and development economies to raise capital and um with um private investors that invite invest into the uh into the blended bond. So the um the initiative um that we have uh in um in partnership with Eurogreen Capital Partners, and this is also the reason why uh we have invited uh Jean-Marie Mass to uh also join the the podcast, is to you know enable ClearStream to establish uh deeper connections also with uh the international financial institutions such as the IMF itself, the World Bank, the IFC, and others. We had meetings with all of those um IFIs, and uh it's a good way to strengthen ClearStream's positioning in the market of um collateral management, because that's what um we're going to talk about when we talk about development.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

I mean, this is quite an interesting development, isn't it? Because the EU had been the leader in um uh taking the sort of initiative on developing new kinds of climate-friendly uh financial instruments and developments, but it seems like that's getting picked up by the rest of the world now. We're seeing uh much bigger engagement and from the private sector too. So sort of unpick that for us. What's changed for you since your visit last year and this year?

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Yeah, I think what what's really the backbone of of this um initiative also on the blended bond is actually a um a research paper which which was co-written by by uh Jean-Marie Matsa uh but as he was a uh visiting scholar at the AMF, that the paper is about the scalability of credit enhanced emergent market climate debt and precisely what role can uh you know guarantees, collateralization, securitization, and investment funds play. This is really uh a uh research paper which uh is available uh for the public, and and that's really the backbone of um of the initiative. So to answer your question, yes, uh the um topic of climate is is still around, but has shifted also from climate financing to what they call transition financing. So I think what we heard in in Washington is also that um we are in the situation in which we are today, because the world largely depends on unreliable, volatile sources of energy, i.e., you know, fossil fuel sources of energy. And and we still need to move away from these to sustainable, reliable, um environmental-friendly energy resources. So this is the if I may say so, the tear on which um the blended bond is also going to be um uh uh applicable.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

And take us into just a little bit more detail about then blended finance, because this is the bringing private uh money and public money together, um, which is sounds like a great idea, but of course, there is currently a lot of talk about there being stress in private investment markets, and that could be a new area of regulatory oversight, and there's issues about exposures and what have you that we've heard about in the news and some sort of announcements about you know potential financial shocks that could come from that that

Investor Protection Via Collateral

SPEAKER_03 4:51

came out from the Bank of England uh just this week. So I'm I mean, tell us what what what how does this operate? What's the how how do you get the security, the safety, the first loss of protection, all those sort of tools that we talk about uh when we're discussing new kinds of bond and finance opportunities?

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Yeah, I think the um the investor protection is really here the what we are uh trying to um to achieve. So um in case of uh of a borrower's default, you know, um then um the lender will will actually uh be um calling on the guarantees and the guarantors will pay according to the um initial uh borrowing payment schedule. So um and um so the idea is to park upfront collateral in an escrow account and keep it as a buffer to pay uh you know um one instalment uh on the on the lender issued notes and fees. So this is a um a scheme that um has been um proven s and has been tested. I think we we have a um a case which is the case of Rwanda, in which um the um uh issuer, so the um sovereign of Rwanda issued a um sustainable linked bond, which was a blended bond, and it was backed by by collateral. Initially, the World Bank uh made a um concessional loan to Rwanda. With the loan, Rwanda purchased the collateral, and then was um the collateral was then moved by um the National Development Bank of Rwanda into uh into a escrow account to keep it as a buffer in case there would be a default of um of the issuer, i.e. um rwanda itself. And so there was um a successful uh launch of that bond in 2023, and this is exactly what we're trying to replicate in um other emergent market and development economies.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

I I hate to mention the elephant in the room, which is the E of ESG. Uh but two years ago, everyone was going, you know, uh mad for ESG. Then there was uh obviously some very public announcement from large international investment banks that said they were throttling back from ESG generally and going to focus in more targeted ways and what have you. And ESG kind of lost uh the its time in the sort of conversation in the media. Um, how is this a uh different? How is this taking ESG to the next level?

SPEAKER_02 7:34

Yeah, I think ESG is no longer um, you know, the acronym that is used, but what remains is actually, you know, the um the green bond principles, which are um the ICMA green bond principles. And so the blended bond is a bond that will comply with uh the green bond principles, i.e., you know, these are um use of proceed bonds, so the issuer needs to actually report to the investor what he's doing with the money that he's actually raising on the capital market because these projects, as I mentioned earlier, are within the overall uh overarching umbrella of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So the um uh green bond principles are aligning with those, and so it shows the investor regularly what the um you know borrower does with the money, and uh you can even you know link uh uh the performance of the bond to uh the um KPIs of the what the issuer does with uh with the money. So sustainable linked bonds are one of the uh instruments that uh can be um used here and have been used in the case of Rwanda. So it's it's it it remains more an environmental and um energy related um you know uh framework than um the S and the G. I believe that's how you could uh simplify it.

SPEAKER_03 9:14

Yes, well, here to talk more about uh blended finance and more to the point

From ESG Hype To Transition

SPEAKER_03 9:22

uh sort of redefining the structures and the asset classes that are underpinning climate finance is an old friend of the show, someone you will know who's been on with us three times over the years, Jean-Marie Masse, a man responsible for issuing the first Green Bond with a Mundy. So if anyone knows about redefining climate capital, it's Jean-Marie. Jean-Marie, welcome back to the show. What has your work as a visiting scholar of the IMF produced in terms of your research uh into how we scale

IMF Research On Scaling Climate Debt

SPEAKER_03 9:55

uh climate debt and climate bonds?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

All right, so my um research was anchored into the deep analysis undertaken by the IMF on the financing needs to fight climate change in emerging markets. And uh the IMF has quantified the amount of money needed and has compared it with the amount of public finance thing available in the in terms of government money and multilateral development bank and development finance institutions, and have found that the public sector is not large enough to finance the need in emerging markets to fight climate change and adapt. So the I was tasked with with analyzing different mechanisms to um to multiply one dollar of public sector money into a multiple of several one dollar by way of using one dollar public sector money to mobilize uh private capital. So the question is was how we can do it. So at the IMF, I was tasked with this research. I had a team of several people uh uh working with me to sort the to work on the research. We did extensive uh uh market consultation with investment bank, investors, credit rating agencies, consultants, think tank to try to figure out uh what can be done to mobilize private capital. And then at the end of the day, it it was a very iterative process, and we published our finding into a working paper, which was published in January 25 by the IMF on credit enhancement, and I'm one of three co-authors, together with two other colleagues from the IMF.

Fragmentation And The Need For Standards

SPEAKER_03 12:06

And you've discovered, haven't you, through this research that that there are some sort of three key issues that are holding back uh the growth of climate finance, and let's sort of deal with those in turn. The first one is this issue of fragmentation, and that's not just fragmentation in terms of uh the guarantee providers, who of course all have different ways of working, but also fragmentation in terms of the kinds of investors that are out there and what they're looking for and how climate bonds don't always fit into the categories of investment categories that they expect.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Well, what I would say is that if we look at uh the size of global bond market, emerging market is two percent of the global bond market. So it's it's really uh uh outside of China. So it's really a small niche, two, three percent. Okay, so we need to start uh from there. And um in institutional investors who are managing vast pools of money, uh they want to uh to do transactions which are efficient, who are easy to access, easy to invest in. In order to meet these criteria, if you use blended finance solutions, which are blended public sector money to raise private capital, uh inherently you you build more complex transactions. And and if they are too complex, they take too long to materialize, and they don't necessarily meet uh each own investor's uh key need for fast transactions to execute. So that's one of the issues. So then you you tend to have too many uh too small transactions, so then they uh the smaller they are, the basically the less appealing they are to investors because they want to be diluted and they they want liquidity in their investment. So via small deal it's not so liquid. So once that's one part of the equation, and on the other part of the equation, uh you have a lack of standardization of public sector credit enhancement tools. Basically, all private sectors have their own tools, their own uh uh specific criteria, which then does not create a real uniform asset class, while investors they they are asking for volume, diversification, standardization. So that's what we have found, uh which would be needed.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

Moving through your your research, there is this sort of second idea that you've come up with, isn't there, that we need to move away from the bespoke project-by-project approach that's really characterized climate finance up to this point, and look to develop more sort of standardized, replicable, publicly traded structures that can be issued at scale and really become an asset class in their own right? That's the the sort of prerequisite we need. Once we've sort of solved this issue of the fragmentation, we need to have a product that is gonna fit in a more standardized format. And so tell us more about that. What does standardization look like for climate finance? What are we gonna see happening over the next few years?

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Okay, uh, I would say for the standardization means uh uh quasi-identical documentation from one blended finance transaction to one to another, uh larger transaction size per transaction, okay, and more volume uh uh uh uh accumulated across many transactions. So it's a lot, standardization is a lot about standardization of legal documentation, structuring an investment process to meet what investors are looking for. But it also means much more knowledge to deliver at the level of the borrowers in emerging markets so that they uh they accept to uh to move to mainstream capital market investment and issue bigger amount than maybe what they are used to in order to better uh have better pricing collision on uh their borrowings.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Where does the resistance come from? I mean, when when you're sort of talking about these issues at the the IMF spring meetings, uh obviously everyone it wants to get behind climate finance, but but what is the resistance that you come up against when it comes to sort of actioning these ideas?

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Well, the the way the way I would put it is uh the market is evolving. So the World Bank has established um a guarantee platform which under one roof, which is MIGA, the instruments arm of the World Bank Group, and now MIGA has consolidated the guarantee product of IFC, World Bank, and MIGA under one roof. So to give an idea, uh a few years back, uh this uh MIGA's guarantee volume was uh seven billion dollars per annum. And I think now they're on track to reach uh maybe 10-12 billion, but the goal is to reach 21 billion by 2030. So if I look at what is happening in Washington at the World Bank Group level, they really make an effort to increase uh risk mitigation via guarantees and insurance product. If I look at Europe, there is also a new platform in Norway, um increased size of platform uh with the European Global Gateway Initiative, with uh IFU in Denmark. So you do have also a push to provide more guarantees. Okay. Now what is underpinning this movement is that the pool of public sector capital is shrinking. Because you know the DFC, D US, or USAID, uh US DID has disappeared, DFC they they trade a business model. So you have less uh public sector capital to deploy, and yes, the needs are quite vast. So then uh what is demonstrated is that guarantees uh so you use under a bloodied finance format as are one of the best tools to use public sector finance resources to mobilize private capital at scale. So there is no real resistance. Now we are at a point where we need to bring innovative products which are compatible with what public sector credit enhancement can do, with what uh mainstream investors are willing to buy. So there is I would not say there is resistance, it's

Guarantees Cost And Bond Liquidity

SPEAKER_00 19:12

a new phase in the development world, which is coming.

SPEAKER_03 19:16

Now there is a a sort of elephant in the room, isn't there, that you've uncovered in your search, and that's that the the credit enhancements come at a cost, don't they, in this kind of finance and total return investors demand uh a spread premium that is higher? And there have been issues, haven't there, where countries, I think it was the one cited in the paper is uh Ghana's 2030 bond was issued at a premium, even though it had uh a World Bank guarantee, but they've actually issued uh paper that that isn't guaranteed in that same way that's cost them less. So is there an issue with the economics of this asset class right now that the climate bonds with guarantees sometimes can be more expensive for the issuing country than other kinds of bonds? Does that sort of hold it back, or is this just a sort of teething trouble that the that sort of comes out of current market pressures but will change as other improvements come to the the way that sort of credit backed sort of climate finance can work?

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Uh yes. So I would say in the example you mentioned, uh there are two dimensions to factor. The first dimension is what is the coupon on the bond at time of issuance, and the second dimension is what is the coupon post-issuance when the bond is issued and is listed. So with credit enhancement, you can lower the cost of issuance. For example, in the case of uh Ghana, the guarantee has allowed to do one notch credit rating upgrade of Ghana. So the better credit rating upgrade, the more the lower the coupon. Then after when we move to on the secondary market, then uh a factor is the liquidity of the bond. So if you have a large bond very liquid, uh there will be uh what we call a liquidity premium, which is relatively small relative to a small bond which is less liquid. And that is uh another dimension, maybe that you are referring to. Okay. So now now uh in the case of uh this particular Ghana bond, uh it has been solved. It was partially guaranteed by the World Bank. The World Bank owner this guarantee paid investors. So there were moments where it was unclear how the World Bank guarantee would kick in, but now it is solved. But that this is a well known case in emerging market, blended finance capital market solution, which had been quite studied and now can be reflected into a new type of structure, addressing maybe a lack of clarity, which in the documentation which The pin is gonna bond. It is part of the new wave. Now we need to study and build on it to create new generations of credit enhanced capital markets instruments. Because if we want to raise to the challenge of emerging market needs, we need capital market instruments because that's where you have size. And so we have to look at that on the planet, uh emerging markets is where most of the big portion of the pre global population lives on one side, and it's also where they they would suffer the most from climate change. So we need to somehow help them uh cope with that. Uh otherwise uh it there would be a lot of multiplier effect, you know, um and the nourishment of population, maybe population migration, these kind of things. Thank you, Jean-Marie Mas. Yeah, always my pleasure and work. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

Okay, and joining us here with our very special update show from the IMF Spring Meetings. Uh,

Emerging Market Capital Flows Shift

SPEAKER_03 23:04

we are delighted to have someone on the show who you will know if you've done anything in capital markets and global markets uh over the last 25 years. I know him, of course, from the uh Central Bank and Sovereign Wealth Fund Forum and from the GFF. First time guest on the show, though. So I am delighted to welcome Jan Willems. He's enjoying an anniversary. In fact, I'm gonna tell people, sorry, Jan, it doesn't look old enough for this to be true. Uh, but it is Jan's 25th anniversary. We've managed it. We've done an anniversary every episode this season. I am so pleased with that. Jan's 25th anniversary at ClearStream this year. He is, of course, head of product management and global markets. Uh, prior to that, he was uh part of the market development team, vice president there, head of sales and relationship management for Benelux and Russia, an expert uh in uh the world of emerging markets and uh capital flows in those areas. That's probably why he's also uh been appointed independently as a director of the supervisory board for the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange. We've got an expert on the show to take us through the changing global currents. Jan, welcome to the GFF. Many, many thanks, Andrew.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

Let's dive straight in. The shifting nature of capital and the way it moves around the world. It's a big picture question, but you've written about the fact that it's changing. The flows always used to be from developed markets into emerging markets, but now there's a lot more movement between emerging markets as as well. Tell us more about that.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

No, and indeed, I mean, for years it was a traditional, you know, set of 10, 15 large global um investment banks and and and asset managers um tapping in consistently looking for yield um at at any given moment, um, trying to tap in whatever was available on the soft currency side, um, being it in Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Asia. Um, but yeah, we all read the newspapers. Um and um we uh I will not use the word de-dollarization, but um the world is seeking alternatives, dots. Um, and those alternatives they're in supply change, those alternatives are in uh energy, uh, those alternatives are in defense, um, and those alternatives are also in financing. Um and the fact that many emerging markets have developed both from an infrastructure point of view but also from a product offering point of view, so quickly over the last five to ten years, um those emerging markets do not only offer alternatives within the sphere of um the buy side and the investment bank sides at you know the the traditional western um uh financial capitals, but it just becomes a lot easier for um other emerging markets just to add um neighboring countries in their investment portfolio alongside dollar, euro, sterling, and yen. So it's a bit of a mix of whatever is happening geopolitically, um, but it's also facilitated by the fact that um uh emerging markets from an infrastructure point of view and a legislation point of view and an uh investment protection point of view are just you know stepping up the scale.

SPEAKER_03 26:27

Well, that's what I want to sort of dig into with you because of course you're an expert on the infrastructure implications of all of this.

Cutting Barriers To Market Access

SPEAKER_03 26:34

And I'm I'm guessing that the the CSDs and central banks in emerging markets uh have they been because they've been built more recently, do they already have the infrastructure and the sort of the pipelines in place to handle this sort of changing uh sort of set of capital flows? Or are they looking for tech solutions to sort of build out their infrastructure so they're more developed in the in the way that you might expect in the EU?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Uh I I would leave tech aside, uh, because 99.99% of the business that I run runs under incumbent technology, and it's not that different in in, let's say, matured markets as in emerging markets. What has happened though, and that is something that we clearly feel, emerging markets for decades were very protective in the sense that um Country X with a small capital market decided to apply for their market very complex tax schemes, very complex um beneficial owner schemes, reporting schemes. So just getting into that market was very complex. So what looked like oh uh that country is nice because it has a 700 yield uh uh profit, but there comes tax, there goes hundreds basis point yields, there comes a very complex uh beneficial ownership structure, there goes another 150% yields. Oh, I have to report annually all my underlying clients to the local regulator, there goes another uh 150 basis point yield. So if you're in a portfolio manager, all of a sudden you re you see that the cost of of operating in that market is so big that you're just gonna buy a five-year US Treasury instead. Um so the entry costs has decreased because it's um if if if you're a ministry of finance of an emerging market, you go and sell your paper from time to time in London or New York, but when you're there, this five, ten, fifteen other ministers of finance doing exactly the same thing, trying to sell your Paraguay bond, your your Gabon bond, your Laos bonds. And you and very quickly, uh many of those frontier and emerging markets understood that they have to make themselves sexy on that catwalk to get those flows in. Um if you want that that little billion that uh BlackRock has sitting there to play around with in an emerging market, um, yeah, if you make it difficult, um it only takes uh a split second for um a big investment manager to decide I'm not going to do this, this is too complex. I get I can get yield there at um a far lower uh infrastructure cost. So that is something that we see. Um that um uh technology is one thing, but just understanding that um uh barriers, legal barriers, uh physical barriers, operational barriers have to be taken away. Uh and we see that in an accelerated way, whereby uh we in Cleastream, I don't say we consult, but we engage with those uh counterparts and we tell them, look, if you want your market to be connected, these are my ten commandments. Uh um we want an omnibus account in the local markets, we want um a foreign nominee structure, we want that you allow free transfer of ownership on a GleeStream platform. And and we we engage. Sometimes those markets need to go to um the local legislator, the parliament to change things. Sometimes that goes quickly. We've seen that happening very quickly in in Southern Caucasian markets. Sometimes that takes a bit longer, Latin American markets, yeah, they're they're a bit more cumbersome and the process is slower. Um, but um the end result is that a whole set of emerging markets just become attractive for other emerging markets, and that's something we we we deeply like.

SPEAKER_03 30:34

And finally, looking to the future, sub-Saharan Africa, capital markets are in motion there.

Sub Saharan Africa Market Momentum

SPEAKER_03 30:42

There's renewed energy, uh, renewed in that's the the news that's come out uh from the IMF meetings, and also, you know, there's interesting developments on the horizon with clear stream there. I know we can't say too much, but give us that big picture about sub-Saharan Africa. What's the African story?

SPEAKER_01 31:00

You know, uh just an small uh uh anecdote. A couple of weeks ago you had a 1.5 billion US dollar bond issued by the Democratic Republic of Congo. So if 10 years ago um someone would have projected that uh the Democratic Republic of Congo would come back to the capital markets, um you know many eyebrows would have uh risen. But um we see on the international debt issuance a lot of activity, a lot of banks in sub-Saharan Africa companies, conglomerates start to tap in increasingly in dollar-denominated Eurobonds, and that's for us a very good sign. And they're bought up very, very quickly by the investment community. Ivory Coast did a couple of very big tickets, Rwanda did big tickets, anyway. Even the Congo now does big tickets, and you know the the dynamics about the region, um being it geopolitical, um, macroeconomic, um, they're changing. I mean, uh, these are commodity-rich countries, many of them. Um they have had quite a lot of investments out of the uh Pacific region, China, you name it, in infrastructure. There's a certain degree of of political stability that that takes place there. Um and um there's a big need for funding. Um and they can either hook themselves on the dollar for the next 50 years, um, but they um they manage now as well to to issue local currency debt. Um they get rid of hyperinflation in many of those countries, um, certain degree of fiscal stability. Um, so um we see basically the ones that have issued uh very successful Eurobonds um knocking on Cleastream's door to see if they could do it as well, but under a local currency and a local domestic regime. So um can't say names now, but we are at least working with two or three of the bigger uh sub-Saharan capital markets to see to what extent we will be able to um um hook their markets to the Cleasting platform the same way we have done it in uh the South Caucasian region and the same way we have done it in um Central Asia, because we see a bit of a very similar story. Um, you know, if you look at the Kazakhstans of this world, uh these are countries that uh uh had to you know first battle their um own internal uh market um deficiencies, inflation, and so on and so on. On the other hand, they have growing populations, they have commodities, so they have managed basically to create a local market infrastructure that gives us confidence, so we could enter there uh and basically create a post-rate market which is not dissimilar than a traditional uh European one, and we would like to replicate that in uh sub-Saharan Africa as well. Because, you know, circling back to what I said, they have understood very well in the region the need for simplification. So um, as much as in North Africa, the Maghreb region, we still see topics like capital controls, um capital gain stacks, we see a much more liberal and open-minded attitude in sub-Saharan Africa where they understand that look, uh, we have to make our market attractive and sexy. So cut out all those elements that are going to eat up yield. And uh it gives us very, very, very good conversations, uh, very, very um good opportunities. So you will definitely hear for in in in the next weeks and months about some of the projects uh that we have uh on our radar screen in the region.

Season Reflections And Sign Off

SPEAKER_03 34:58

Alright, sadly, that's all the time that we have uh in this finale episode, but happy 25th anniversary and Oh who who told you who told you that? Uh I mean I tried to hide that. I mean we have I have my ways. I have my ways, yes. 25 years in Luxembourg, 25 years in Clearstream, and huge thank you there to uh Jan Willems, uh head of Products for Global Markets and ClearStream, and of course, an old friend of the show, Sean Rimas, there, the visiting scholar at uh the IMF. And Christian, that's it. Can you believe it? We are at the end of season five, 48 episodes. For some reason, that's how it's worked out. Don't know how it isn't 50 yet, but 50 is coming soon, and what a great season we've had.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

Yeah, indeed. It seems like uh it's the end of a long, long journey. I mean, five years, it's uh it's already more than uh 40 uh 48 episodes, so it's um it's just uh all oxed in, and I'm I'm very proud of it. So I I think that um particularly this season was uh really uh very uh uh moving because we had uh anniversary of uh the GFF Summit, so the the 30th uh GFF Summit, which is also uh a huge milestone. Um it was just a couple of months ago, and we were both uh uh in person on stage uh at Central Bank and Sovereign Miles Fund Forum. And um yeah, I think um I I still remember you know the uh the seminal um episodes uh that we had uh this year. I mean, um if if we look back, I mean we uh we had uh episodes on the um tariffs and the geoeconomics uh opening up the season. Uh the world looked totally different when we opened uh season uh five than than it looks now. So it seems that we uh are you know navigating uh in ever more you know um troubled waters, but we did fine, and I'm I'm very proud.

SPEAKER_03 37:10

Yeah, and I mean we're ending on a high note too, despite the the unprecedented amount of global disruption that's taken place since we did that first show uh with Charles Litchfield back in July. Um the mood at the IMF uh Spring Summit, as Jean-Marie pointed out, felt very upbeat. And yeah, there are challenges ahead, but we will meet them, and of course, we've also been talking during throughout the season about business as usual, which is also in flux, you know. We've got these big changes that are coming with T plus one. Um, we've got uh increased demand that we looked at with uh 360T uh for uh uh cash uh liquidity in Forex transactions. Um, you know, we we've also uh uh celebrated the uh 20th anniversary of GC pooling, of course, which you know is a fundamental underpinning of uh the international uh money market system. Um and uh as well, we have, of course, our 30th celebration summit, and we've gone inside just recently the world of corporate treasury with Ames and Treasury Spring. So it's been a mixture of big events and business as usual, which is always changing as well. As we are too, so we will be back for season six to keep looking under the hood and behind the scenes at the world of liquidity, cash management, repo, uh securities lending, post trade, blockchain, you name it, we've had it all. We've had the tech, we've had the future, we've had the 28th regime, and you know, next season it might be the 29th regime, who knows? So, uh, from everyone here in the virtual studio, for me, Andrew Keith Walker, it's a huge thank you. Thank you to all our guests who've been on this season. And goodbye from me. And we're gonna have a short break now, and we will be back with season six of the GFF podcast. And of course, that also means a big goodbye from the man who helps bring this all together, the BFF of GFF, Mr. Christian Rossler. Christian, I'll see you in season six.

SPEAKER_02 39:20

Yeah, I hope so. If uh AI is not uh replacing me, then um I'll be happy to be on board. But um, let's see what comes.

SPEAKER_03 39:27

From all of us here, it's a big bye bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And don't forget, this show is brought to you by ClearStream Banking, one of the main sponsors of the GFF summit in Luxembourg every year, and features members of the ClearStream team and special guests offering their personal opinions, not the opinions of ClearStream as an organization. There's no representation made as to the accuracy or completeness of information in this podcast, and nor should it be taken as any legal tax or other professional advice.