Western Europe
LATEST ARTICLES
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France’s political and banking troubles obscure good momentum in Societe Generale’s corporate and investment bank. Yes, capital is constrained, but the bank says it is moving in the right direction.
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The bank’s decision to sell a large minority stake in Credit Suisse’s former China JV to BSAM, a Beijing-based fund it has known for decades, is a setback for Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities. The US firm is still committed to expanding in China’s troubled market.
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Diego De Giorgi’s arrival at Standard Chartered has coincided with important changes at the bank. He talks to Euromoney about the transition from investment banker to chief financial officer, and how the firm can further leverage its advantages amid growing profitability and geopolitical risk.
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The limitations of the Alternative Investment Market are forcing many companies to explore other sources of funding. Nevertheless, there is optimism that the market for small and medium-sized growth companies can be revived.
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Basel-endgame pushback has reduced the urgency for US banks to relieve capital, but investor appetite for significant risk transfer trades is spilling over to Europe.
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The region’s tough economic history, coupled with its strength in soft and hard commodities, makes it best positioned to tackle today’s challenges.
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The Siena-based bank has a better bill of health and is once again a target in Italy.
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Despite an overwhelmingly Italian business in retail, Intesa Sanpaolo has stepped up its share of corporate and investment banking revenue outside the country. In its global growth markets, divisional chief Mauro Micillo says the firm is here to stay.
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With corporates taking a more holistic view of sustainability, banks are under pressure to address concerns over reporting and verification requirements for sustainable working capital, trade finance and liquidity management products.
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Risk aversion has spread quickly since the call for a snap election in France, from French government bonds, through bank stocks and CDS spreads to now derail the IPO of an Italian maker of luxury trainers.
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It is getting tougher for investors to execute block trades of more than €2 million in Europe’s fragmented equity markets. Matching buyers and sellers needs a return to negotiation and away from pure electronic trading.
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After years of retrenchment, Commerzbank’s head of corporate clients Michael Kotzbauer tells Euromoney of a tentative return to growth. The bank has dodged Germany’s commercial real estate slump but is having to adapt to a worsening geopolitical backdrop. Capital and cost efficiency remain big priorities.
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Rising confidence in European banks has raised hopes of a surge in domestic M&A, perhaps laying the foundations for the long-sought ideal of genuinely pan-European firms.
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Does the high number of drawn-out insolvency cases in the UK suggest a failure of regulation?
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John Mathews, head of UHNW Americas for UBS in New York, tells Euromoney why the US’s private banking model is so successful, why the Swiss firm is really in the life counselling business, and explains why it has targeted US ultra-high net worth clients.
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Corporate treasurers are playing it safe when balancing the merits of exploiting improved access to capital against the risk of unexpected economic shocks and business interruption.
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Financial markets reacted calmly to news of an early UK election, expecting whoever wins to stick to the fiscal rules. But whoever wins must also cope with rising debts and onerous interest payments.
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Will increased transparency in the European corporate bond market lead to higher transaction costs for large trades?
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In an interview with Euromoney, European Banking Authority chair José Manuel Campa joins the European Central Bank and others in pressuring banks to do more to prepare for geopolitical risks spreading from Russia to China, the US and Middle East.
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Banks and regulators are keen to use instant payments to reduce the influence of Visa and Mastercard on the European payments industry – but replacing these two dominant players will be far from easy.
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UK banks, asset managers and individuals see better returns from dumping UK stocks and investing elsewhere, but the impact eventually becomes ruinous.
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BBVA’s bid for Banco Sabadell didn’t appear to be going well when its share price slumped after the announcement. Then Sabadell rejected the offer despite the substantial premium to its own share price.
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Twenty-five years ago in Spain, ING launched a branchless bank – still its biggest greenfield retail operation. Euromoney asks Iberia chief executive Ignacio Juliá Vilar what still makes it stand out from both incumbents and newer arrivals.
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As mandated real-time payments loom, Europe’s banks and other payment providers must look at modernising legacy infrastructure.
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Corporates’ longstanding complaint on banks’ payments offerings is that they don’t know what they are being charged for but suspect it is too much. Airwallex now provides an alternative at global scale.
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BBVA could have bought Banco Sabadell much more cheaply in 2020. Sabadell’s CEO César González-Bueno has since turned his bank around. But BBVA’s return to the negotiating table comes at a time when European banking may be moving to a new and more confident phase.
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Restructuring HSBC, like painting the Forth bridge, is a never-ending job. While Noel Quinn has done well, the board must not make another ham-fisted transition.
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The body responsible for settling about $6.5 trillion of global daily FX trades has decided against extending its deadlines to accommodate non-US participants who still want to use its next-day settlement service. But it expects the impact to be limited – far too limited to justify the complexity that a change would impose on its members.
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The two European banks are both trying to de-emphasise their investment banks and want to build up areas where they see weakness. Barclays is later to this party than Deutsche, but both will have found encouragement in the first three months of 2024.
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A private credit market growing so fast, away from the oversight of bank regulators, may be a new source of systemic risk. With smaller investors taking greater exposure to an asset class whose high returns and low losses look almost too good to be true, there could be trouble ahead.
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Quarterly survey reveals that UK finance professionals may be feeling more upbeat about prospects, but that this is yet to translate into a willingness to take greater risk onto balance sheets.
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UK fintechs attracted more investment than all European rivals combined in a tough funding market last year, but a broken IPO market leaves them with nowhere to go.
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The EU’s Instant Payments Regulation may have fired the starting gun on real-time payments in Europe, but many banks remain stuck in the blocks.
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The good news is that bank executives don’t see big loan losses ahead; the bad news is that they lack the confidence and vision to invest in the business.
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The Greek bailout fund’s exit from Piraeus Bank last month was the country’s biggest post-crisis privatization. The bank’s chief executive, Christos Megalou, tells Euromoney that this is more than a capital-return story. It’s also about growth: in the economy, in wealth and asset management, and, thanks to neobank Snappi, internationally.
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After a decade of restructuring, EFG International ramped up hiring last year – above all from Credit Suisse. Chief executive Giorgio Pradelli talks about the firm’s scope to lead a wave of Swiss-bank consolidation, while doubling down on new wealth from the Middle East and Asia.
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Credit Suisse’s domestic bank was arguably the failed group’s best and strongest division. One year after the rescue, UBS is not the only one trying to feast on its domestic wealth-management and corporate-banking leftovers. Other Swiss and international players also hope to benefit from the longer-term fallout in Switzerland. Will the rush to pick up the remnants of the fallen champion pay off?
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The decision by the US SEC to drop mandatory Scope 3 reporting weakens global emissions reporting standards. However, many corporate issuers are already using Scope 3 performance targets on sustainability-linked transactions for non-regulatory reasons. Are the debt and equities markets leading companies onto ESG ground upon which regulators fear to tread?
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While welcome, initiatives by the government and financial sector bodies designed to make it easier for companies to raise funds in the UK face a number of obstacles.
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A wall of liquidity among investors has helped to drive a busy start to the year for bond issuers, as they rush to capture tight spreads.
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The German lender’s decision to put its chips on southeast Asia is paying off handsomely. Under the leadership of Asia CEO Alexander von zur Mühlen, Deutsche Bank has doubled its capital in Vietnam and Indonesia, with more to come, moved a host of global roles to the region, and has seen Asean eclipse its India and China business in terms of growth and absolute numbers.
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Asset managers and industry regulators face operational challenges around the tokenization of private assets.
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Caution at local commercial banks – coupled with the eagerness of large investment banks to foster relationships with private equity players – means large real-estate deals fuelled by back leverage could be primed for a comeback in Europe.
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Corporates seeking to leverage sustainable investment opportunities continue to be restricted by the lack of reliable data on which to base their assessments.
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The Basel committee is shocked – shocked! – that some banks might be reporting inflated leverage ratios.
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The UK startup is now a fully regulated bank and private funds are backing its vision to embed regulated banking in non-financial companies as well as fintechs.
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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.
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The UK Chancellor has big plans for the tech sector.
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Thinner margins across the banking industry hit smaller banks harder. But investor pressures are also less of an issue for mutually owned lenders.
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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.
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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.
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The newest ESG trend in retail banking might be a niche offering for now, but all banks will have to take it seriously someday.
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Leading commercial banks are focusing on their approach to relationship management to reassure corporate customers that they are being listened to.
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There are sensible elements to CEO Slawomir Krupa’s plans for Societe Generale, but their communication needs attention.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Corporates continue to exhibit worrying levels of complacency when it comes to the implications of rate rises for their bottom line.
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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.
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Trade-receivables securitization transactions are flourishing as corporates seek more affordable access to long-term financing.
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Banks need to start quantifying the legal risks of both climate action and inaction.
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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.
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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.
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The midcap broker needs new business lines to survive a prolonged IPO drought.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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The London Stock Exchange Group’s head of sustainable finance strategic initiatives wants climate data to redefine the act of indexing.
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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.
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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.
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Outgoing supervisory chair Andrea Enria warns against ‘complacency’ – despite higher capital ratios at eurozone banks – as he announces new requirements on banks to tackle investment-banking leverage, liquidity shortages and leveraged finance risks.
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The chief executive of Newton Investment Management is a forthright believer in the power of active investors to effect change at the companies they invest in, and thinks tinkering with market rules is unlikely to boost the appeal of London-listed equities.
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Many corporates are realising the benefits of intercompany netting on FX risk, trading and cash-flow visibility.
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Barclays hopes to win over investors with new return targets and buyback commitments next February, but it really needs a revival in investment banking.
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Regulators are starting to take a more messaging-based approach to sustainable finance, but stopping greenwashing won’t automatically lead to a transition to net zero.
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The Signa Group of companies is complex, but its problems are simple: debt service costs are going up while property values are going down.
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More and more bond trading is automated. As volatility now shifts from rates to credit that will provide a stern examination of new trade execution tools.
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The overall use of cash will continue to fall, but the decline of bank branch networks means that businesses now face a headache in handling physical takings.
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When Kevin Gartside was medically discharged from the British army in 2012 after three tours of duty in Iraq, he was unsure what to do next. He saw cross-over appeal in banking, an industry with a surprisingly flat operating structure that prizes punctuality, teamwork, adaptability and decision making.
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Standard Chartered’s corporate and institutional bank can increase its profitability even when rates fall, divisional head Simon Cooper tells Euromoney. After reaping the benefit of investments in cash management, he is now turning to the financial markets business, especially credit – reinforcing efforts to grow clients in Europe and the Americas.
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Competition for deposits is influencing pricing decisions on commercial loans. However, the major cash-management banks insist that they have maintained both deposit levels and lending rates.
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The war in Ukraine has suddenly ramped up demands on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development after the institution spent years searching for a new role. President Odile Renaud-Basso talks to Euromoney about the bank’s strategy and plans to boost its capacity through a €4 billion capital increase.
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Enel could trigger the largest step-up event in the sustainability-linked bond market if it misses its CO₂ emissions targets at the end of this year. How the market reacts will set the tone for the future of these instruments.
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The Swedish regulator digs deep into background of prospective senior managers.
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UK banks that focus on tech are seemingly rewarded with greater customer trust.
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Corporates are taking a big punt on markets remaining relatively benign, given their apparent lack of confidence in existing FX technology and systems.
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A $3.5 billion deal attracts $36 billion of demand, answering the question of whether Swiss banks can return to this market after Credit Suisse's collapse.
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Net interest margins are shrinking. Banks may need to find new sources to fund customer loans, perhaps even by lending to each other.
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Andrea Orcel’s complex deal with Alpha Bank ultimately opens a new front in the Milan-based lender’s pan-European strategy: Greece.
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In one of his last interviews in office, Ignazio Visco sets the record straight on his controversial 12 years as Italy’s central bank governor: a period of almost constant crisis. Today, the country’s NPL problems seem cured but, as he acknowledges, simmering risks remain.
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Banks may be retreating from lending directly to small and medium-sized enterprises, but by lending to credit specialists with good technology they can still be a source of funding for the sector.
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Sustainability-linked loans have faced growing criticism for their opacity and concerns around greenwashing. Sustainability-linked loan bonds could help to bring more transparency to the market and help legitimise these structures.
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It took five years for the invoice finance specialist Accelerated Payments to advance its first €1 billion, but just nine months for the next €500 million.
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Bidding $2.5 billion for the bulk of Credit Suisse’s sub-Saharan Africa ultra-high net-worth private bank book 18 months ago has been a ‘game changer’ for Barclays in the region, the UK bank’s Africa market head Amol Prabhu tells Euromoney.
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Even as the industry pleads its solidity, accidents keep happening.
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Just three weeks on from the rapturous response to Arm Holdings re-listing on Nasdaq, the prospects for a revival in IPOs suddenly look dim.
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A market-beating increase in UniCredit’s share price is just the beginning, chief executive Andrea Orcel tells Euromoney. He must now prove the many remaining sceptics wrong and show the bank can still thrive when net interest margins fall and credit costs rise.
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More banks have announced partnerships with asset managers to place loans into private debt funds that offer investors better risk-adjusted returns than bank equity.
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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.
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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.
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BlackRock joins Allfunds initiative to distribute new variants of private equity and credit funds to wealthy individuals.
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Euromoney talks to Jacques Levet, chief digital officer at BNP Paribas, about the competitive advantage that newly acquired FX fintech Kantox offers.
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Slawomir Krupa may yet turn around Societe Generale. But it won’t be by shock and awe.
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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.
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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.
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Market participants have welcomed recent moves to enhance FX liquidity by increasing the efficiency of credit payments for trades.
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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.
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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?
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As other investment banks cut staff, HSBC has been hiring to build a leading bank in tech and healthcare.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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The political response to rising bank profits should focus more on debt distress than on deposit rates and taxation.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Banks including NatWest and JPMorgan are struggling to put out reputational risk-management fires.
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The NatWest chief executive’s resignation ends a solid if unexciting three-and-a-half years at the helm.
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The increased corporate focus on environmental, social and governance issues is impacting treasury teams that can struggle to justify their initiatives.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The activist shareholder highlights concerns about a former poster child for private equity ownership of banks.
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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.
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The global disclosure recommendations don’t stand a chance against mandated regional regulation.
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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.
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High interest rates and low bank appetite for risk have created the perfect conditions for a renaissance in invoice factoring.
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Bankers are hopeful that they may soon be able to issue new AT1 deals again as the secondary market recovers from the Credit Suisse write-down.
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Extreme FX volatility is proving a challenge for some finance directors who are struggling to minimize the impact on their bottom line.
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The standardized approach for counterparty credit risk has not yet proved to be the catalyst for greater use of clearing in the FX market that some expected.
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Inflation is not beaten and rates may rise further. But high-grade bonds can still provide steady income and low risk, playing a new old role in investor portfolios.
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If the UK is to become an international crypto hub, it must focus on bringing regulatory certainty to the industry and the banks that back it.
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As interest rate volatility persists, corporates are taking a hard look at their trade finance options.
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Leading firms join a new network of networks, but crypto natives see just another walled garden.
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The banking sector appears to be quietly confident that the European Commission will row back on new regulation that, if enacted, could notably increase the cost of some trade-finance instruments.
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The big transaction banks are becoming increasingly active in the B2B marketplace as they seek to cash in on corporate digital transformation.
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The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has fuelled an abrupt end to venture-capital exuberance. There are vital implications for fintech and for the banking industry.
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Pouncing on a firm with lots of corporate broking relationships at the low point for IPOs is a smart trade.
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The acquisitive fintech group reckons it can accelerate the transition from legacy FX technology by making it easier for tech firms to get their products to market.
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UBS will face pressure to spin off Credit Suisse’s Swiss bank and may yet lose more private-banking assets. Coping with this will make managing down illiquid and hard-to-value markets positions look easy.
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Proceeds raised in the first three months of this year were 99% lower than the amount raised at the start of 2021.
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The French investment bank is taking a bet on a double-edged blockchain technology to stay ahead of both the tokenization and sustainability trends.
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The recent spate of deposit flight that spread panic through the banking systems of the US and Europe opens a chance for non-bank lenders to seize more of the core businesses that banks want to retain. Central bank emergency measures may have prevented the crisis from spreading, but a new phase of disintermediation has begun.
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The chair of Ping An Asset Management has called again for the break-up of HSBC and spin off of its Asia assets. His argument is a strong and valid one; his problem is that none of the bank’s other main shareholders seems to care.
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Standard Chartered’s new chief sustainability officer is not shying away from the reality of what the energy transition looks like in emerging markets.
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A flurry of collaborations and the acquisition of Nivaura’s technology is putting NowCM in a key position in the digital capital markets ecosystem. Its focus on real-time issuance and its ownership of a regulated marketplace may have just become even more relevant.
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With the advent of its strategic alliance with Japan’s Mizuho Financial, Lombard Odier now has wealth management tie-ups in seven Asia countries, with the promise of more to come.
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Twinco Capital facilitates access to sustainable funding by focusing on pre-production finance.
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Rising interest rates have driven demand for more efficient liquidity structures.
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As soon as the ink was dry on the agreement to take over Credit Suisse, UBS chairman Colm Kelleher rushed to bring ex-CEO Sergio Ermotti back to run the bank and the deal. Execution risk is off the charts, and the nerves of shareholders, employees and taxpayers are jangling.
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Pure-play Swiss private bank Julius Baer has had to reconfigure its business model for the 2020s. Chief executive Philipp Rickenbacher talks to Euromoney about why scale and nurturing talent are key to the long-term success of a firm that does just one thing and one thing well: serving wealthy private clients.
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The Credit Suisse deal may have merely accelerated Hamers’ anticipated departure.
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The failure of venture capital’s favourite bank is bad news for a sector reliant on new injections of cheap capital to sustain loss-making growth.
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What will UBS’s post-merger sustainable finance strategy look like?
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First Abu Dhabi Bank’s recent interest in a bid for Standard Chartered and an ill-fated investment in Credit Suisse by Saudi National Bank have put the spotlight on Middle East banks as potential acquirers of international firms.
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It has been over a decade and a half since a Chinese financial institution bought or invested in a Western counterpart. Beijing sees the West’s banking system as incomprehensibly chaotic and messy, and its own – albeit flawed – as a bastion of stability.
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Hong Kong conference moves along. Nothing to see here.
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Recent events call into question most of the core assumptions behind the rules designed to keep banks safe through a liquidity squeeze.
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Will the fall of Credit Suisse be a seismic moment for private banking? Probably not – the reality is that wealthy clients need their financial advisers too much. Wealth is flighty for sure, but it usually alights nearby at a more stable lender.
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UBS’s integration of Credit Suisse will be a long and uncertain process, but keeping the latter’s Swiss universal bank may mean the deal eventually comes good.
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Bankers have been at pains to stress how different the world is today from the dark days of 2008: higher capital; more liquidity; lower credit risk and all that. But while individual banks may be safer than they were, collectively they arguably now face a worse existential crisis. Societies face awkward questions about how they value the utility of the banking sector – and how they should pay for it.
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UBS shareholders might find plenty not to like in what seems at first glance like a great deal. The bank is making itself more complex at a time when creditors and investors put a premium on simplicity and focus.
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Big foreign-exchange banks are focussing on enhanced functionality to promote greater use of single-dealer platforms.
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HSBC’s global head of trade finance talks about how the bank has built 'the trade finance platform for the future'.
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Michael Klein can’t be expected to ‘devote significant time and attention’ to the unlikely prospect that UBS will allow a CS First Boston spin-off without being paid. Greensill-style invoices for Klein’s theoretical future services could be the answer.
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Solar thermal technology could offer cheap carbon-free heat for manufacturers. But tech developers are stuck in a financing gap between venture capital and project finance that will be harder to fill after recent bank failures.
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Credit Suisse came out of the global financial crisis in better shape than many peers. But fragility was never far away – in the years that followed its fortunes would swing back and forth, sometimes violently. Here is the bank’s route to 2023, explained through Euromoney’s own coverage.
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Unfortunately, while the SNB can provide ample liquidity that Credit Suisse doesn’t really need, it cannot provide the trust and credibility it sorely lacks.
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The decision by its Japanese owners to relist ARM, the UK’s great technology success story, in the US instead of London was inevitable after years of decline and the hammer blow of Brexit. Deregulation might further accelerate its collapse, even as the City wins a boost from new technology bringing the vast pool of retail money into equity capital markets.
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Banks like Santander, BNP Paribas and SocGen see auto finance and the future of mobility as critical pieces of their overall group strategies. But as mobility becomes an increasingly fractured business, what does the auto finance bank of the future look like?
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HSBC runs towards the storm as others are fleeing it.
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For one of the most considerate men in capital markets, nothing was ever too much trouble.
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The former Barclays chief executive is set to scale up the core banking-technology provider that aims to do banking 10 times better.
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Santander executive chairman Ana Botín has stepped back from the M&A-based restructuring many assumed former CEO candidate Andrea Orcel would oversee. Euromoney asks Botín and her new chief executive, Héctor Grisi, how they plan to make this international retail bank succeed.
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The EU green bond standard is understandably broad. But because of this, the limits between sustainable and transition finance remain unclear.
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Patents are a high-profile demonstration of a bank’s commitment to innovation, but they are not the only option for those looking to encourage new ways of thinking.
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Droit helps traders decide in milliseconds if deals comply with the ever-changing rules and aims to do the same for wealth managers.
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The COO of Deutsche Bank’s International Private Bank, Sandra Wirfs, tells Euromoney how it has been able not just to slash costs but also to make its wealth management business more cost-efficient than the core bank.
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Tokenization is spreading fast. Regulated finance is finally embracing blockchain technology just as most cryptocurrencies stand revealed as overleveraged Ponzi schemes. The institutional herd is moving, but can the blockchains they are shifting onto bear the load?
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After its DAX return, Commerzbank now has a clear – if uncertain – path to achieving its profit target, according to CFO Bettina Orlopp.
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The former CEO of Cazenove has written an intriguing reflection on his 23-year career at the storied London institution. It captures his view from the heart of the turmoil, but mostly steers clear of score-settling.
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More blue blood than bad blood at former chief executive’s book launch.
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Restrictions on upstream oil and gas financing aren’t the silver bullet that the sector needs to achieve its climate goals.
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Firms betting on interest-rate declines will be hoping that inflation does not force central banks to raise the cost of borrowing again.
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Higher interest rates will weigh heavily on the property development lending that makes up the bulk of OakNorth’s loan book. But chief executive and co-founder Rishi Khosla tells Euromoney the bank can maintain its ultra-low loan losses and keep growing.
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Four years ago, Christian Sewing set out to give the German bank new direction. His plan, based on income-rich services like private banking, continues to surprise and succeed. Euromoney caught up with the head of International Private Bank, Claudio de Sanctis, to discuss last year’s financials and his plans in Asia and the Middle East.
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With the digital pound, the UK is following much of what the European Central Bank has done on the digital euro. But could the UK’s more unified banking sector foster a more revolutionary central bank digital currency?
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A month ago, First Abu Dhabi Bank said it had looked at Standard Chartered but decided against a bid. Now, it is believed to have changed its mind. What has changed?
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While the bank plans to spin off its troubled investment bank, the new worry is whether and how soon it can repair the wealth management business.
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New platform acts as central account keeper under Luxembourg law for first ever sterling bond deal on blockchain.
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Banks and corporates are taking a variety of approaches to mitigating the impact of rising interest rates, quantitative tightening and economic uncertainty on the availability of liquidity.
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Just back from Davos, the bank’s new head of sustainable finance says the industry needs to do more, and Barclays needs to do more on transition.
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Private credit funds are committing more to specialist non-bank lenders such as iwoca, seeing big potential in small business credits, even if NPLs are set to climb.
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Some leading FX banks have struggled to stay competitive in forwards, swaps and swaptions thanks to SA-CCR rules, but compressing portfolios helps.
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While big US banks edge slowly towards exchange-like trading of loans, a group of market veterans have tested a system in Asia and will soon launch in Europe.
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Appetite for corporate issuance remains robust as investors dismiss recession fears and take on credit exposure.
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Strong collective-action campaigns might hurt some banks' reputations, but they will do little to convince those institutions to change their energy policies.
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Going all out to keep the sell side sweet seems a sensible strategy for success in the difficult P2P FX market.
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The recent update to the green taxonomy and implementation of the SFDR RTS have received a mixed reception in parts of the EU.
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With little likelihood of currency volatility subsiding any time soon, corporates continue to face difficult decisions when it comes to how best to mitigate FX risk.
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Some issuers are grabbing the opportunities offered by a new capital markets year. Others would do well to face reality sooner rather than later.
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It seems difficult to convince investors that higher bank profits are sustainable.
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As Europe’s economic mood sours, a sharp rise in interest rates is putting commercial real estate through its first big cyclical turn since 2008. The non-bank sector, which has become a vital enabler of funding at higher leverage, now faces a test of its resilience.
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First Abu Dhabi Bank looked long and hard at Standard Chartered, and others will do the same so long as it’s cheap. But any suitor must win the approval of Temasek.
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The European Commission has mandated instant payments across the eurozone, and banks must urgently ensure that their payment systems are fit for purpose.
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The ECB is barely half way through raising rates. Quantitative tightening will further raise the cost of debt in 2023, and is set to test bond market capacity.
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AT1s rallied on news that UBS will redeem a key deal in January. But with refinancing costs higher than coupon re-sets, the pressure now passes to other big banks.
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The UK government has launched a sprawling range of measures to reform the country’s financial sector and markets. But the moves were mostly already under way – it is really all about the optics.
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While there are some entertaining items – one country banning meat, the UK voting to UnBrexit – Saxo sees recession failing to halt inflation with the world economy on a war footing.
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On December 1, EU member states agreed on a general approach for the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. The final text shields banks from their full responsibility to prevent environmental harm, thanks in part to France’s post-Brexit ambitions.
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As a long recession looms for the UK, past successes may be a sign of future problems.
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Concerns about the wider economy and its impact on disposable income have eroded individuals’ appetite for FX trading, despite attractive levels of volatility.
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While other economic blocs aren’t so convinced of the merits of issuing retail central bank digital currency, the eurozone is ploughing ahead. In doing so, however, it is having to water down the project to such an extent that its usefulness will be limited.
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Shareholders will be keenly watching two market levels for Credit Suisse shares in the weeks ahead: the theoretical ex-rights price and the subscription price for the capital increase that is under way.
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Societe Generale and AllianceBernstein may look like an equities odd couple. Leveraging Societe Generale’s derivatives franchise is key to the new joint venture, as is maintaining AllianceBernstein’s reputation for independence.
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Credit Suisse directors may sigh with relief that shareholders have approved the latest capital raise, but they are already guiding to yet another big loss.
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Most governments would have been delighted to do what Iceland managed with its sale of Íslandsbanki shares earlier this year. But an audit of the deal has triggered a war of words with the body responsible for it, as well as some very odd conclusions from an Excel spreadsheet.
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After 12 years of near continuous restructuring and capital raising at Credit Suisse, the longest-serving chief financial officer of any G-Sib bank offers a few parting lessons.
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Euromoney meets Damian Payiatakis, Barclays Private Bank’s head of sustainable and impact investing, to talk about how quiet private wealth has been so far at the UN Climate Change Conference.
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NatWest digital SME bank Mettle has broken new ground in its partnership with Polish fintech firm Vodeno.
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HSBC’s outgoing CFO, Ewen Stevenson, has mounted a robust case for the bank’s cost performance in an intriguing call with analysts that also featured an appearance by his replacement, Georges Elhedery. As he prepares to leave the bank, Stevenson defended his legacy by taking on the firm’s arch-critic, Ping An.
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The German bank’s strong third-quarter earnings are a partial result of forming a new international private bank division two years ago, honing it and continuing to invest in the strategy.
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Market experts fear that continued inflation and poor growth mean that many currencies are vulnerable to the pressure that the UK has seen recently.
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European banks have raced far ahead of their US peers on sustainability. But the continent is now facing an energy emergency, creating pressure from some corners to reverse investment declines in oil and gas. Can Europe’s banks remain frontrunners in sustainable finance in today’s fragile geopolitical environment?
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The biggest IPO in Europe for a decade has not generated the kind of excitement that might have been expected in calmer times. Porsche’s flotation was solid enough, but its structure and unusual nature make it a poor proxy for the broader equity capital markets business, which is on its knees.
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Bankers are sending mixed messages about market strains. Dire warnings about year-end pressures, pleas for regulatory help and assurances that banks can sort this out are being deployed simultaneously.
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The UK’s humiliation after bond investors rejected its mini-budget and sparked a liquidity crisis threatening the country’s pension funds holds two lessons for the rest of the global financial system. First, more markets will break down thanks to rising rates. Second, the battle everywhere between central banks fighting inflation and governments seeking to sustain economies and manage the cost of vast stocks of public debt will define finance for years to come.
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Growthfund was formed six years ago as a steward for Greek state-owned enterprises in the hope of improving and extracting value from them. As chief executive Gregory Dimitriadis explains, its ambitions now include investment, emission reduction and enabling the flow of capital from the Middle East.
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The weakness of the pound and strength of the dollar has implications for companies on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Boutique investment bank DAI Magister suggests donor funds could catalyse private equity and debt investment in climate tech, the big theme of COP27.
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UK pension fund hedges have failed the first real stress test in a new era of rising interest rates. Bankers are surprisingly relaxed about the implications for other threats to global systemic stability.