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The number of family and multi-family offices is steadily increasing thanks to technology developments and a desire for objective advice, say wealth management industry executives.

The regulatory probe into allegations that traders have colluded to manipulate the $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign exchange market has some way to run, but some investors are pre-empting the results with technologies they say will help them reduce their reliance on industry benchmarks.

In a wide-ranging interview, Ann Cairns, MasterCard’s president of international markets and resident statistics buff, talks to Euromoney about tech-sector valuations, the digital revolution, acquisitions, regulation, and a yacht called…

Algorithmic trading comes to the government bond market, while large virtual networks compensate for reduced dealer balance-sheet holdings of corporate bonds.

The Federal Reserve is playing mind games by trying to persuade investors that the biggest danger to economic stability is deflation. It is both disingenuous and bad news for the dollar.

Salesmen hold the key to improving liquidity in corporate bonds. They just need to capture the network effect.

Intermediating the bond markets is shifting from a principal risk-taking business for banks to a brokerage business. At a time when the IMF is warning of bond market illiquidity, innovative solutions are springing up. In the high-volume government bond markets, trade-execution algorithms will be new drivers of efficiency. In the corporate bond markets, new systems will drive efficient internalizing of orders and matching across networks of dealers.

For the first quarter, Citigroup reported an 18% decline in fixed-income revenues compared with 2013 and chief financial officer John Gerspach described the overall FICC business as a “shrinking pie”.

The chairman of Swiss private bank J Safra Sarasin explains in an interview with Euromoney how nimble execution is key in the private-banking consolidation wave that has freed up relationship managers, in a deal that also reflects Morgan Stanley’s strategic shifts.

Companies are not only underestimating the cost of post-merger integration, with as much as 14% of total deal value on average being spent on the process, but in many cases using only ‘gifted amateurs’ to try to ensure its success.

US banks’ treasury services businesses provided an uplift to global banking revenues in the first quarter of the year, amid a mixed earnings season that had Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) reporting its first loss in three years.

The US’s punitively high tax rates on companies repatriating overseas cash is forcing the country’s blue-chip corporates to raise cheap debt on the bond markets to help plug domestic cash-flow deficits.

Higher loan-to-value (LTV), 15-year and adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) are in the frame as the structured agency credit risk (STACR) programme is expanded.

The IMF sees a big potential risk to financial market stability in the increasingly dominant role of credit mutual funds and ETFs in the bond markets. These promise daily liquidity. If tapering leads to spiking interest rates and bonds sell-off, these investors could be hit by runs just as damaging as those on a bank and with unknown spill-over effects.

More than 200 of the world’s largest companies and financial institutions have warned that regulation impacting the multi-trillion dollar over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market has multiplied their administrative burden and pushed hedging costs up to new highs.

Senior representatives from banks, clearing houses and CLS will meet in London on April 24 as pressure grows to find a workable mechanism for central clearing of forex options.

While banks now expect US regulators to follow Basel’s lead in relaxing the denominator of total assets, the Fed still worries about dealer dependence on short-term funding from SFTs and might demand a capital surcharge.

Muni market concern spreads to Chicago; Distressed buyers pile into Puerto Rico

Foreign banks are facing up to the implications of new rules in the US requiring them to hold capital onshore. But subsidiarization is set to become a global phenomenon. Bankers argue they will be hamstrung by trapped liquidity and capital. Customers might lose out as well. What are the true costs of ensuring national safety in a global banking system?

Declining primary debt market volumes and associated revenue declines raise a warning flag ahead of bank results for another poor quarter in FICC.

The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard Fisher, has compared the effect of quantitative easing on investors to “beer goggles”.

With market volatility near all-time lows, and no single strategy consistently effective in generating outsized profits, investors and traders are looking to increase leverage to generate absolute returns.

The CFTC is close to finalizing long-awaited rules for FX derivatives that will herald a seismic shift to trading these instruments on SEFs – but those already trading on SEFs are frustrated with teething problems and unintended consequences, including illiquidity and extraterritoriality concerns.

Goldman’s controversial relationship with the Libyan Investment Authority was brought back into focus this week after a former executive of Palladyne International Asset Management brought a claim against the Dutch firm describing it as a ‘money-laundering operation’ for the former Gaddafi regime.

Russia is expected to launch its own nationwide card payment and processing system within months, potentially breaking the dominance of US companies Visa and MasterCard for making electronic payments in the country.

John Lefevre dished the dirt on the cut-throat, unfulfilling, absurdly self-important world of investment banking through his GSElevator Twitter account. But it took a publishing house to shaft him. He is exasperated, but confident his elevator will go back up.

Did the contraction of the US current account reduce global dollar liquidity, triggering the rout in emerging markets? And would the continued contraction of the US trade balance spark a synchronized collapse in emerging-market deficit nations?

Transaction banking is one of the most lucrative areas of corporate wholesale banking, helping the sector as a whole generate returns above the cost of capital, but the intense pressure banks are putting clients under in this business is forcing them to consolidate banking relationships.

A new concept of holding orders to tackle latency arbitrage will be trialled for pauses of at least three milliseconds on USD/MXN trades on Thomson Reuters Matching, just weeks after rival EBS completed the roll-out of its latency floor.

Russia-US tensions over Ukraine could be the 'first major political conflict that is played out in international financial markets', according to Citi, as sanctions take their bite.