Technology that joins up every stage of a trade and brings together a wealth of data will one day help businesses make fast financing decisions and borrow cash the moment they need it.

Harmonised payments across Europe will not meet the goal of launching by February 2014, because some countries are taking advantage of a two-year extension to the deadline for adopting agreed standards. Businesses still need to adapt to a single system for processing payments across Europe, and they will initially handle data in different ways from country to country.

Emerging Asian economies concerned over the impact of capital inflows from Japan, thanks to the latest bout of quantitative easing, are breathing a collective sigh of relief: the expected tsunami has failed to materialize to-date, an apparent boost to Asian price, FX and financial stability.

UK companies will likely be able to trade with China more freely under a proposed currency swap agreement between the countries’ central banks. John McCormick, Chairman of RBS Group Asia Pacific, says the first renminbi bilateral swap line between China and a G7 country could be the largest yet at about CNY450 billion.

Just months into Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s master plan to end deflation and kick-start the economy, the jury is out on whether he can succeed.

Declines in the value of the currencies of commodities-producing countries might signal the beginning of the end of the commodities super cycle, analysts say, but equally they could represent a shift in patterns of investment flows.

The bail-in imposed on depositors of banks in Cyprus in March was a new paradigm in resolution mechanisms, and has raised concern among European corporates that money in the bank is no longer a sure bet.

Punting on the sustainable growth rate of emerging Asian economies in the coming decades - a development that will profoundly reshape the global economic order - is a trillion-dollar wager.

China is keen to control the expansion of its foreign exchange reserves, but faces headwinds arising from the twin problems of its export-led economic model and policy in respect of the yuan.

The plethora of complex and sometimes overlapping bank ring-fencing schemes being pursued around the world is creating uncertainty in the industry and apprehension among its detractors.