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LATEST ARTICLES
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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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As banks focus more on climate adaptation across their businesses, are they conceding that mitigation efforts are futile?
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He leaves the Australian financial firm after transforming its commodities and global markets division, and despite being widely tipped as likely to succeed current CEO Shemara Wikramanayake.
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Farmland acquisition for transition agriculture has proved attractive to the climate-focused investment management franchises of large asset managers. Will real-asset investors follow suit?
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A debate in Australia arguing for the liquidation of the sovereign wealth fund has relevance to the global fund community.
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Outbound Chinese M&A deal-flow has slowed to a crawl even as inbound activity remains steady. So focus in the region is moving elsewhere: to rising India, steady-and-lucrative Australia and even Japan, where once-bloated conglomerates are streamlining portfolios under intense pressure from activist shareholders.
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It is no surprise to find the ACCC blocking ANZ’s takeover of Suncorp. It is eye-catching, though, to see the regulator naming a deal it would prefer to see happen.
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For the first time in its 62-year history, the Reserve Bank of Australia has appointed a woman as governor.
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Australian banks adore residential mortgages. But they are ignoring a cohort of people who are going to run into a lot of trouble with repayments.
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From small beginnings as the offshoot of a British merchant bank in 1969, Macquarie has become the world’s largest infrastructure asset manager, a powerful investment bank, a global commodities player and several other things besides. It has built all of this through a distinct culture built on risk management, individual empowerment and a capacity for constant reinvention – but it hasn’t always been popular along the way. A new book by Euromoney’s senior editor in Asia Chris Wright and Joyce Moullakis examines the journey.
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The Australian Securities Exchange took a leap of faith in commissioning Digital Asset to build a blockchain replacement for its clearing and settlement engine five years ago – perhaps too big a leap. Here, Digital Asset’s CEO explains what went wrong and what was learned.
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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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As spreads widen for credit, Macquarie is rushing in.
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China, the US, Australia and Japan are all conducting a curious courtship with Pacific nations, hoping to build trade relationships, climate resilience and security agreements.
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Logging only a 1.2% decline over the past year is good going for Australia’s sovereign wealth fund, testament to a policy to build an inflation-ready portfolio relying heavily on private markets.
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The strength of the Australian economy is not enough to convince analysts it is a good time to increase AUD exposure.
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The merger, if it gets through the competition regulators, underlines the fact that nothing matters more in Australian banking than mortgages.
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Lombard Odier joins Barclays and Nomura in hoping to grow partnerships and shareholdings in a market that is heavily banked but underpinned by a vast institutional bid and a belated surge towards sustainability.
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Almost half of the Australian group’s record profit came from the Americas this year. Will Macquarie still call Australia home?
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For four years, a criminal case brought by an Australian regulator against Citi, Deutsche Bank, ANZ and six bankers who were facing jail has looked ill-judged, acting retrospectively against common market practice in a share placement. Now it has collapsed and lessons need to be learned
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The firm has joined Barclays and Jefferies, as well as start-ups Jarden Australia and Barrenjoey, in bolstering its presence in Australia. What’s the appeal of this heavily banked market?
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Macquarie has emerged from the pandemic cashed-up and ready to spend.
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A longstanding pioneer in illiquid and private assets, Australia’s Future Fund has found itself well placed for an uncertain and yieldless world. It got here by being able to adapt to changing conditions and CIO Sue Brake knows there is plenty more of that to come.
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Macquarie Group chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake has laid out her bank’s ambitions in green energy, as its Green Investment Group reports a record portfolio.
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An Australian court case brings together a former prime minister, Goldman Sachs, and a tale of friendship asunder at a funds management company.
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Australia is not the first country that comes to mind with regards to climate action. But away from the political rhetoric, the exceptionally powerful superannuation funds and corporates are pushing change. The key is an acceptance that in Australia it’s all about transition.
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Australia is an interesting market for those wondering how neobank models might evolve, as it has already experienced success, failure, and sale to the incumbents.
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Afterpay’s out-of-nowhere success has captivated Australia for some time, dividing the nation into fans and critics of the pay-later fintech. Now it is part of Australia’s biggest-ever M&A deal.
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A Royal Commission in Papua New Guinea has heard evidence that accuses UBS of exploiting the country in a complex 2014 loan, which it is claimed enriched the Swiss bank inappropriately and was awarded over the objections of the then-Treasurer of PNG. It will report its findings in September.
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The bid for Australia’s biggest airport highlights pension funds as the most powerful names in town. And take a look at the advisers.
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Upstart Jarden has fine people; Nomura has network and balance sheet. Will a partnership work?
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Australian lender serves up word soup along with first-half results.
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Francesco de Ferrari gave up a plum private banking job at Credit Suisse to take over troubled AMP. It was always a tough ask. Personnel mis-steps did not help, but in the end there was not going to be much of a business left for him to run.
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Investment bankers head for the exit at Australian business.
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The Malaysian lender has reached a $700 million settlement with the Malaysian government. It draws another line under 1MDB, but Najib’s trials will rumble on.
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The Australian financial services company has announced a profit guidance upgrade prompted by a win from its commodities business thanks to the crisis in Texas. It’s a bad look, but it illustrates both a complex and flawed market, and a bank with a great eye for a niche.
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Diversification has insulated Australia’s sovereign wealth fund through a difficult year.
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Xinja wanted to be different, but Covid hit at the worst possible time – after it had launched a high-interest deposit business, but before it had offset that with lending.
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Macquarie’s cherished reputation for being able to adapt to changing circumstances has been put to the test like never before by Covid-19.
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Does the move stem from China-Australia tensions?
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New Barclays-backed venture staffed by veterans of the Swiss firm.
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The distributed denial of service attack on the New Zealand stock exchange highlights national financial infrastructure as a growing target for cyber criminals.
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Australians may draw a different meaning from MAS’s terminology.
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The aviation industry is in for a bumpy ride.
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A bold move by New Zealand’s Jarden to hire some of the finest talent in Australian investment banking and go it alone feeds the sense of a changing competitive landscape.
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Just like the global financial crisis, Australia is emerging from Covid-19 more strongly than the rest of the developed world. Investment banks here have never been busier, raising huge sums of equity from one of the world’s largest asset pools. In the first of a two-part series on Australian investment banking, we look at the work that came out of a global pandemic.
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How has Jarden managed to snare such revered figures in the Australian industry?
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It seems a strange time to want to buy into Australian wealth management.
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No developed market in the world has blue-chip banks paying higher dividends than those in Australia. It’s implausible to continue doing so during the coronavirus crisis – but banks fear a backlash from the income-loving retirees and retail folk who make up half their investor base.
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Bronte Capital’s John Hempton takes a unique approach to finding the stocks he wants to short; it has given him a cult following in his native Australia and beyond.
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What can we learn about the post-Royal Commission world of Australian banking from the National Australia Bank AGM?
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There's not much to celebrate at the Australian bank, despite the festive parties being back on.
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The bank’s CEO and chairman are out, a week after allegations of AML failings that helped enable child exploitation.
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It seems the Australian banking scandal has caught up with Westpac.
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The bank's global head of core trade products says: 'Once you start digitizing trade finance, everything starts to move faster.'
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When renewables private equity group Equis Energy was sold to GIP for $5 billion – $3.7 billion of it equity – investors walked away with well over double their initial investment. The founders of Equis made around $800 million. But why was more than $500 million of the proceeds ringfenced into a vehicle called Equis Renewables, in which the underlying investors did not participate, while the general partners got it all? The story of how those assets got there casts a light on the curious inner workings of modern private equity.
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To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, clean up water supplies, prevent the loss of biodiversity, mitigate fire and flood risk and meet the nutritional requirements of a growing population the world must improve its regenerative and sustainable agricultural practices – new tools and support from the financial services industry are needed to fund that transition.
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Last year was key in the development of one of Oceania’s more unexplored yet potential-rich economies. Its inaugural $500 million sovereign dollar bond caught light and its hosting of the APEC Summit was a hit. The country now needs investment to unlock myriad opportunities in agriculture, power, infrastructure, telecoms, financial services and tourism.
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Thursday’s announcement by Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) that it is suspending the sale of its wealth business may trigger similar turnarounds by other big four banks. They have unexpected latitude after the Royal Commission.
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Macro and monetary policy factors are affecting some currencies more than traditional commodity triggers.
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The final report of Australia’s Royal Commission into misbehaviour in financial services had plenty of blood and thunder, and has already brought down the top executives of National Australia Bank, but it doesn’t bring the promise of lasting reform.
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Commissioner Kenneth Hayne 'not as confident as I would wish to be that the lessons of the past have been learned'.
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An industry humbled, NAB flagellated – but it doesn’t make the biggest change.
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Cornered by Euromoney, former Aussie PM Kevin Rudd was less scathing of his political rival Wayne Swan in person than he is in print.
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$500 million bond was third attempt since 2013; makes Credit Suisse loan commitment look shrewder.
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One thousand pages tell us plenty about bank misconduct – but nothing new, and it’s all in the price. Asic is the most embarrassed institution in Australia today.
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The announcement on Thursday that Shemara Wikramanayake will replace Nicholas Moore as CEO of Macquarie Group in November is significant for two reasons.
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Non-bank market makers in Australian FX are not taking away many big clients from banks, but they are taking meaningful market share in smaller clients.
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Australia is used to regulatory and reputational calamity, but a case against ANZ, Citi and Deutsche has taken a more personal turn.
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Bloodbath at AMP and the crowdfunding of startup Xinja are signs of new era.
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The likely recommendations from Australia’s investigations are changes that should have been made years ago.
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Bank South Pacific dominates most of the markets that it serves, but it is not big enough to find an exchange suitable for a long-discussed second listing.
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From late-night beginnings in suburban Sydney, a new payments system is transforming shopping down under – and possibly beyond. Meet the two entrepreneurs behind this fintech hotshop.
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As chief executive of Westpac, Gail Kelly was a trailblazer for women in finance. She learned the hard way about the battle for equal pay. Now she is trying to use her experience to encourage others.
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Australian banks will face a year-long review into their conduct, but it’s not clear what they will expose that’s not already out there.
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Domestic real-time payments are spreading as more countries adopt the technology, but the move to international, cross-currency payments is still some time off.
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New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority and the country’s stock exchange are working to impose voice recording for traders after market-manipulation investigations highlighted limitations in the regime.
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Between 1997 and 2004, Peter Nicholl was governor of the Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina; he succeeded in establishing economic stability in a country ravaged by war, but how did a New Zealand central banker get the job in the first place?
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When accusations of anti-money-laundering failures became the latest hit to Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s reputation, chief executive Ian Narev announced his retirement, but first he spoke to Euromoney about the challenges of banking in a market where everyone’s a critic.
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As Singapore reinforces its position as the leading FX trading centre in the Asia Pacific region, Euromoney looks at the prospects for other regional hubs.
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Consultant sold to own staff by NAB; Australian banks simplify and divest.
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No other sovereign wealth fund looks like Australia’s. Its chief investment officer reckons that, by some measures, almost two-thirds of the fund is in alternative or illiquid assets. Even so, it’s working.