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China's long battle to get the renminbi (RMB) included in the IMF's reserve currency basket has been well documented, right up to the point it achieved that goal on November 30. There is little doubt that the move will help pave the way for wider use of RMB globally.

Your average private bank? Underwriters in Asia are fed up with inflated orders. The practice itself – which sees investors request more securities than they actually want, knowing the bookrunner won't fill their entire order – is not isolated to Asia's primary markets. But with a relatively large proportion of the region's wealth controlled by high-net-worth individuals, the private banks that steer these empires are emerging as the prime culprits.

Here's a cheery Christmas quandary: would you rather be fined or publicly shamed? Back in November, the UK Takeover Panel publicly censured Credit Suisse, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Holman Fenwick Willan over the way they handled the 2010 creation of Bumi, a London-listed miner of Indonesian coal.

If there's one thing to take from Europe's various capital market initiatives over 2015 – most notably, the Capital Markets Union – it's that the continent's financial infrastructure needs work. Europe's new single securities settlement platform, Target2-Securities (T2S), has been hailed as one of many solutions to that problem. A €1 billion ($1.5 billion) project run by the European Central Bank, T2S provides the post-trade IT system that underpins Europe's single capital market. And while its potential to boost efficiency and reduce costs shouldn't be underestimated, the project's first few months have been marred by technical issues and severe delays. "There's definitely questions over the complexity of the system," says Godfried de Vidts, chairman of the European Repo Council. "The amount of delays and teething problems so far is not surprising, and I think we can expect a lot more of that in the future."

An unlikely source of issuance in Europe's growing contingent convertible (CoCo) market in 2015 was Greece. And the next 12 months could lay the foundations for more.

India has stepped up its game to compete with China in internationalising its currency, with Prime Minister Modi recently announcing a government-backed railway's listing of a rupee-denominated bond on the London Stock Exchange.

Dawn raids are a gruelling experience, even for industry veterans. Thankfully, they are willing to share their tips on how to survive one

African eurobonds haven't built on 2013 and 2014's record volumes, but there are some other interesting developments at play. Most notably, a growing number of corporates are taking advantage of the yield curve set by sovereigns and are tapping the international investor base.

While 2015 was the year securitisation came back into fashion – at least in the eyes of the European Commission (EC) – 2016 could be the year that reality bites and regulatory disconnects hit home.

With the renminbi's (RMB) long-awaited inclusion in the IMF's basket of reserve currencies being announced on November 30, calls for greater clarity over rules governing foreign issuers accessing the onshore market is set to intensify.