Republicans and Democrats seem to be inching towards to a deal that would raise the United States’ debt ceiling and avoid a damaging government shutdown – or even a sovereign default – a senior Republican strategist has told RBS.

Emerging market sovereign bonds are overvalued by an average 5 per cent and are due a correction as US monetary easing nears its end. Emerging European debt looks most at risk of a sell-off, RBS analysis shows.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.