Western Europe

With some big deals launching this week, Europe’s IPO pipeline is flowing at last. If they do well, they should put to bed the notion that ‘private IPOs’ are what is needed to provide exit routes for sponsors. A handful of recent deals shows that the biggest driver of success is doing the simple things well.

The UK Chancellor has big plans for the tech sector.

Thinner margins across the banking industry hit smaller banks harder. But investor pressures are also less of an issue for mutually owned lenders.

For a deeply unpopular government with little room to manoeuvre, the chance to bribe voters with a cheap offer of bank shares is irresistible. The bank in question is now well-run and profitable while its stock still trades at a discount. But the great NatWest share offer will do little to revive UK capital markets.

The UBS chief investment office’s sustainable and impact investing strategist wants to avoid measurement for the sake of measurement, but responding to client demand for more data while ensuring its readability remains a challenge.

The newest ESG trend in retail banking might be a niche offering for now, but all banks will have to take it seriously someday.

Leading commercial banks are focusing on their approach to relationship management to reassure corporate customers that they are being listened to.

There are sensible elements to CEO Slawomir Krupa’s plans for Societe Generale, but their communication needs attention.

In 2020, Deutsche Bank’s Asia chief, Alexander von zur Mühlen, placed more of his chips on fast-growing southeast Asia. As global firms diversify out of China, his prescience and willingness to deliver on his convictions is starting to pay off.

Investors and staff at Societe Generale are slowly starting to understand chief executive Slawomir Krupa’s brutally honest approach to the bank’s many challenges. Taking them with him as he embarks on his restructuring plan may prove a more delicate task.

Diego De Giorgi’s arrival as Standard Chartered’s CFO coincides with a shift away from asset shrinkage and a “final push” on digital transformation.

A private debt hangover in real estate is threatening middle-class retirement savings across Germany. Local banks, which focused more on senior loans, should be safer. But are these lenders ready to finance the recovery in commercial property that the German market so badly needs?

Even after the rally on its latest restructuring plan, investors still value the UK bank at such a wide discount to book that management must consider radical action.

Barclays chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan intends to stop a low-returning investment bank from dragging the rest of the group down with it. He argues that most of the improvements are within the bank’s own grasp. That is debatable, and in any case hardly reassuring.

The UK government’s impending sale to retail investors of a big stake in the bank informs the shadow-play guidance on this year’s earnings.

Corporates continue to exhibit worrying levels of complacency when it comes to the implications of rate rises for their bottom line.

Extracting value from Russia via a stake in Strabag previously owned by Oleg Deripaska shouldn’t be confused with a proper disentanglement from Russia by Raiffeisen. The main impetus for the transaction may, in fact, lie with Deripaska and Strabag’s other shareholders.

Trade-receivables securitization transactions are flourishing as corporates seek more affordable access to long-term financing.

Banks need to start quantifying the legal risks of both climate action and inaction.

It is not hard to find short-term worries over global markets’ state of readiness for the US’s transition to one-day settlement in late May. But even if the UK, Europe and those Asian markets still using two-day settlement can adapt to the shift in the longer term, they will also face intense pressure to lessen their dislocation from the US cycle by copying its move. Many also fear the ultimate end-game of same-day or even instant settlement.

The Sino-Swiss corridor, set up to encourage Chinese firms to sell global depositary receipts to international investors in the European state, took off fast in 2022. But a host of challenges, from Chinese regulatory concerns to an apparent lack of global interest, has stalled its progress.

The midcap broker needs new business lines to survive a prolonged IPO drought.

Record regional bank profits, plus strong capital ratios in Western Europe, have fuelled hope for more bank acquisitions in Central and Eastern Europe. The uncertain effect of recent court rulings on Swiss franc mortgages, however, is a big obstacle to deals in Poland.

Corporates are adopting a variety of approaches to mitigate the impact of uncertainty in foreign exchange markets caused by divergence in economic policy and performance.

They already dominate the investment banking business in Europe, and now the leading US banks have their eyes on an even bigger prize. They see their vast investments in the digital technology transforming payments and transaction services and their retained global presences as the keys to winning even greater revenues from Europe’s midsize corporates.

Appealing to issuers by removing investor protections makes no sense when London’s decline as a listing venue stems from domestic investors abandoning the UK market.

Collaboration between national banks has seen widespread adoption of mobile payments schemes. The French and German-led approach of focusing on a single European scheme could therefore be seen as a distraction. But is it the only real way of keeping US payment companies at bay?

The London Stock Exchange Group’s head of sustainable finance strategic initiatives wants climate data to redefine the act of indexing.

Ambitious brokerage firms have precipitated a shift in demand for FX licences, with interest in regulated European and Asian markets on the increase at the expense of offshore jurisdictions.

After overseeing radical transformations at Bawag and Hamburg Commercial Bank, Cerberus Capital Management now has ultimate control of HSBC’s French retail bank. Former UniCredit banker Niccolò Ubertalli is running the new business, and reveals a very different strategy to the private equity company’s German-speaking antecedents in European banking.