Online articles

• A decade of development

  The KangaNews-Westpac Corporate Debt Summit debuted in 2011, with a relatively small audience and a market that could not yet take consistent supply of corporate bonds for granted. In the decade since, the event and the market have grown and diversified. By 2019 – the last year before COVID-19 put the in-person event on hiatus – registrations had more than trebled, to nearly 600, and the event’s agenda covered not...

• Base camp

  Westpac Institutional Bank backed KangaNews to establish a corporate debt conference in Australia when the market was trying to put down new roots after the devastation of the financial crisis. The event – called the KangaNews Corporate Bond Summit when it debuted in 2011, and more recently known as the KangaNews-Westpac Corporate Debt Summit – has grown in lockstep with the size and depth of the market.

• Next phase for corporate debt

  Financial markets are at the heart of era-defining changes happening in today’s world. How adequately the Australian market rises to the challenge will help define its own future and that of the whole economy. Westpac Institutional Bank leaders speak to KangaNews about the state of the local debt market, the task of integrating sustainability within it and the changing context in which it operates.

• Sustainable corporate debt establishes base camp in Australia – and looks to the summit

  Like the Australian corporate debt market as a whole, the local sustainable debt space has progressed in leaps and bounds over recent years but still has a mountain to climb. The emergence of sustainability-linked instruments has opened the sustainable-debt door to a new range of borrowers, while investors are increasingly integrating sustainability principles in their credit processes. Participants at a roundtable...

• The economic arc of recent history

  Having celebrated his 30th anniversary with Westpac Banking Corporation in 2021, chief economist Bill Evans is in a unique position to view the challenges facing markets and economies thanks to his deep understanding of how they have responded to comparable events in the past. Evans speaks to KangaNews about the economic outlook, the wealth trade-off between wage earners and asset owners, the risk of...