Upstart Jarden has fine people; Nomura has network and balance sheet. Will a partnership work?

Australian lender serves up word soup along with first-half results.

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.

Investment bankers head for the exit at Australian business.

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.

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.

Diversification has insulated Australia’s sovereign wealth fund through a difficult year.

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.

Macquarie’s cherished reputation for being able to adapt to changing circumstances has been put to the test like never before by Covid-19.

Does the move stem from China-Australia tensions?

New Barclays-backed venture staffed by veterans of the Swiss firm.

Australians may draw a different meaning from MAS’s terminology.

The aviation industry is in for a bumpy ride.

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.

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.

How has Jarden managed to snare such revered figures in the Australian industry?

It seems a strange time to want to buy into Australian wealth management.

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.

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.

What can we learn about the post-Royal Commission world of Australian banking from the National Australia Bank AGM?

There's not much to celebrate at the Australian bank, despite the festive parties being back on.

The bank’s CEO and chairman are out, a week after allegations of AML failings that helped enable child exploitation.

It seems the Australian banking scandal has caught up with Westpac.

The bank's global head of core trade products says: 'Once you start digitizing trade finance, everything starts to move faster.'

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.

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.

Macro and monetary policy factors are affecting some currencies more than traditional commodity triggers.

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.

Commissioner Kenneth Hayne 'not as confident as I would wish to be that the lessons of the past have been learned'.

An industry humbled, NAB flagellated – but it doesn’t make the biggest change.