As clients tackle the most challenging financing environment for more than a decade, with surging inflation, rapidly rising interest rates and the overhang of a potential recession, it is understandable that banks are focused on their immediate needs. But these must be met in concert with longer-term funding strategies that will have been laid down before the current market volatility.
“Every company we meet is experiencing a micro transition,” says Elif Bilgi Zapparoli, who was co-head of global capital markets at Bank of America before becoming head of international client strategy in June. "We have to get to net zero and that requires changes in different orders. We sit at the intersection of that with the capital markets.”
There has seldom been a time when it has been more important to plan ahead. “We are formulating a group of balance sheet doctors,” Bilgi Zapparoli explains. “Our role is to present scenarios as clients are starting to think ahead.