Western Europe

European corporates are finding a warm welcome from investors, pushing investment-grade volumes to a 2023 monthly record last month – their biggest total since the start of the interest-rate hiking cycle. But while investors are clearly ready to buy even the more adventurous stories, they still need the reassurance of sensible pricing.

As a relative outsider, Slawomir Krupa might have appeared better suited to the chief executive job at Societe Generale precisely because it had done so badly under an establishment insider. BNP Paribas’ good performance, by contrast, would make the traditional background of its rumoured chief-executive-in-waiting, Marguerite Bérard, less of a barrier.

BlackRock joins Allfunds initiative to distribute new variants of private equity and credit funds to wealthy individuals.

Euromoney talks to Jacques Levet, chief digital officer at BNP Paribas, about the competitive advantage that newly acquired FX fintech Kantox offers.

Slawomir Krupa may yet turn around Societe Generale. But it won’t be by shock and awe.

Despite tweaks to improve efficiency, Societe Generale’s new strategy has received a lukewarm reception. New CEO Slawomir Krupa has lifted the capital target, but revenues will remain flat, and there is a lack of news on asset sales.

Bankers at Lloyds say that progress in FX, fixed income and structured finance this year reflects chief executive Charlie Nunn’s strategy for targeted growth in corporate and institutional banking.

Market participants have welcomed recent moves to enhance FX liquidity by increasing the efficiency of credit payments for trades.

Borrowers that financed cheaply in 2021 will soon hit a maturity wall. Many will struggle to refinance at higher cost. Some will default. Private credit managers – still magnets for institutional capital – are set to step in and bridge some of the financing gap left by the banks.

Financial market practitioners might be forgiven for reflecting on a job well done now that the final Libor panel has ended its submissions. The journey has been immense, but the focus is turning to loose ends, including the argument that just won’t go away: is there a place for credit-sensitive rates in a post-Libor world?

As other investment banks cut staff, HSBC has been hiring to build a leading bank in tech and healthcare.

Banks and investors opposed to European Union derivatives clearing plans have made an astonishing charge: the EU is worse than the US in jealously guarding its own markets.

HKEx chief executive Nicolas Aguzin opened the group’s latest new office in London on Wednesday. His aim: to get more global firms to IPO in Hong Kong and convince investors to put money to work there. But against the backdrop of China’s economic situation, his team will have its work cut out.

China is having a shocker of a year. Growth has stalled, deflation is back and global firms are moving production elsewhere as they de-risk from China to boost supply-chain resiliency. FDI is down sharply and exports are sinking. Just as Brexit reshaped the UK’s relationship with the world, has Covid done the same for China?

The political response to rising bank profits should focus more on debt distress than on deposit rates and taxation.

The domestic economy is flatlining while interest rates continue to rise, but the booming banking sector has helped overall UK corporate payouts keep pace with those elsewhere.

The investment firm founded by securitization experts in 2015 has grown to an $8 billion portfolio of 60 companies without managing any third-party funds and still sees big potential returns, notably in football clubs, from applying the discipline of structured finance to operating businesses.

Thames Water has become the highest profile example of a UK corporation that finds itself hamstrung by inflation-linked bonds issued at a time when persistent high inflation and economic stagnation seemed unlikely bedfellows.

Accessing funds via debt capital or private placement may seem like an onerous task, but a growing number of corporates see it as an opportunity to mitigate the impact of changes to bank-capital deployment.

Banks including NatWest and JPMorgan are struggling to put out reputational risk-management fires.

The NatWest chief executive’s resignation ends a solid if unexciting three-and-a-half years at the helm.

The increased corporate focus on environmental, social and governance issues is impacting treasury teams that can struggle to justify their initiatives.

The German lender has named Claudio de Sanctis as its new head of private bank and created a single, unified division – part of longstanding plans to generate more income from the business by rooting out inefficiencies and tapping into new global income streams.

All private banks are different: in how they project their brand, build business, serve clients and generate fees. But they all seem to have two things in common. They love lending to rich people with big art collections and chatting about ocean preservation.

At €1.9 billion, international investors would happily have bought all of Europe’s biggest IPO since Porsche – even on the illiquid Bucharest stock exchange.

The activist shareholder highlights concerns about a former poster child for private equity ownership of banks.

Regulators forced banks to skip dividends during Covid, but let them make up payouts later on. They should now do the same for AT1s or risk that market failing.

The global disclosure recommendations don’t stand a chance against mandated regional regulation.

Societe Generale’s recent African exits, and BNP Paribas’s talks with Orange Bank, highlight how closely Europe’s banks tend to follow each other. Differences are often more a question of strength than strategy.

High interest rates and low bank appetite for risk have created the perfect conditions for a renaissance in invoice factoring.