North America

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein seems to be on a comfortable glide path towards maximizing the value of the performance stock units that will provide most of his future compensation.

Changes to US banking regulation will focus on specific targets rather than wholesale legislative reform.

Goldman's new incentive scheme for its top management has some curious quirks.

HSBC sees new lending opportunities in the increasingly digital exchange of purchase orders and invoices between big companies and their smaller suppliers.

Demand for FX algos is on the rise as asset managers seek to take greater control over order execution, according to a JPMorgan survey.

It is tough to create a franchise in global finance, but over the last five years Christian Meissner has mixed a potent cocktail at Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s global corporate and investment bank. Can it build its relationships with key clients to the point where it becomes a true challenger to JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs?

Global FX trading has fallen between two consecutive triennial surveys for the first time since 2001, according to the BIS, with declines in spot trading accounting for most of that decline – but measured in other ways, FX liquidity remains robust.

In-house banks offer the prospect of more efficient management of FX exposures for corporations, but putting the necessary infrastructure in place presents a considerable implementation challenge.

As Europe improves, corporate investment is rising – with one glaring exception.

The provider of cloud-based wholesale bank operating systems has grown fast in the US, starting with SME lending for community banks and growing to a key partner of the country’s biggest commercial lenders.

Banks might want to stop blaming regulators for delays in opening accounts for businesses and the high costs of international payments and FX, because if they don’t do a better job, challengers will.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected an exchange’s request to list what would have been the first bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), but it might not be long before such a digital currency fund becomes reality, say commentators.

The traditional request-for-quote method of FX trading is far from going the way of the typewriter, even as volatility has boosted activity in all-to-all liquidity providers, whose transparency makes the practice of last look impossible.

Lloyd Blankfein may think that Goldman Sachs’ bankers have a monopoly on doing God’s work, but HSBC seems to be giving the US firm a run for its money.

The 30-year bull run in bonds is far from over.

Brokers and insurance agents can still ignore Gary Cohn and shake off their reputation as cowboys.

While the imagery around the Trump presidency looks awful, it may obscure some good intentions – but what stops us cheerleading these efforts is the worry where they spring from.

A US federal appeals court ruling on February 21 effectively ended a legal attempt by a group of hedge funds to stop the government from collecting billions of dollars of profits made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in recent years.

Religious organizations are challenging corporations over climate change, while big investors stay mute.

The US always looked a tough nut to crack for CLSA and it’s only getting tougher, so it’s not a shock to see the Hong Kong brokerage heading for the exit.

While US regional banks are thriving, European banks of a similar size, in similar economies, are the focus of concern. If they want to survive in a rapidly changing eurozone, they might do well to take a look at provincial America.

Continental Europe’s top corporate and investment banks showed just how far they continue to trail their US peers as they reported annual results in February.

The dollar’s multi-year bull run might last a couple more months, but its fundamental underpinnings are weakening.

Performance analysis solutions, once so pricey only the biggest banks could afford them, are becoming more widely used for FX strategies as regulations demand greater due-diligence processes and sell-siders are under pressure to prove they are giving clients value for money.

The Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) regulatory sandbox has been a hit with market participants and regulators alike, giving firms whose services were never anticipated by existing rules the chance to test out new features without fear of fines or enforcement action.

If you want to kill the conversation at a dinner party, one sure-fire winner is pensions, but it is the $25.2 trillion in pension assets that fuel global capital markets and there needs to be some serious thinking on how they will work in the future.

Rather than moaning about the time and money spent chasing false-positive alerts of criminal or terrorist financing, banks ought to be sharpening up their own anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) systems or renting in better ones.

They have tried and mostly failed – European investment banks’ lag to their US peers is a blot on their international prestige and it is structural.

Attempts to build a North America business have left egg on the faces of many senior HSBC executives, but now, with two key differentiators – its big balance sheet and global network – it may have figured out how to be an investment bank in the US.

There’s plenty wrong with post-crisis US bank regulation, but as the new US administration looks to roll back Dodd-Frank, its protectionist instincts might start a global race to the regulatory bottom.