The bank had a good year, keeping profits high and bad loans low. But the big challenges of the 2020s start now.

Earlier this year HSBC chief executive Noel Quinn pledged $6 billion of investment in Asia – half of it outside Greater China. Having recognized he can do so much more in southeast Asia and India, how will he achieve this?

Covid left Asia’s big markets closed to business travel, yet M&A is surging, with Australia and southeast Asia at the forefront of activity. China, where the focus is on local investments, is, however, bucking the trend.

China’s president is a modern-day emperor who rules with an iron fist. His ‘common prosperity’ push promises better jobs and more equality, but it’s causing analysts to ask if the market is no longer investible and investors to fret and pull back – at a time when the country needs foreign capital more than ever.

Hong Kong’s harsh quarantine rules could stay for another year – and possibly longer. So could China’s. Bankers aren’t happy, but they’ve learned to adapt.

A lawyer with a specialism in helping Chinese companies to float in the US is among the cast of characters working on Donald Trump’s Spac.

Last week, four global banks unveiled cross-border wealth management services under the banner of Wealth Connect, but with the crisis at Evergrande unresolved and growth slipping, the scheme comes at a tricky moment.

As more Chinese high-yield names default in the real-estate sector, one of the region’s leading distressed debt investors shares his views on the state of the market – and the investment opportunities that come with it.

President Xi Jinping has set out ambitious plans to decarbonize China’s economy. But most companies and banks, hampered by a lack of top-down regulation, have little idea what ESG is, let alone how to measure and report it. It is a mess – and one that China needs to clear up fast.

China unveiled a plan for its first national parks on Friday, the final day of the COP15 conference in Kunming. It reveals the weight of Party concerns about pollution and biodiversity fragmentation, and their impact on political stability.

Barclays all but left Asia five years ago but is slowly returning to relevance in the region. The hire of Angela Liu from Deutsche Bank as its first China chief executive is a step in the right direction.

Asian high yield has always been dominated by Chinese real estate, so the Evergrande crisis has shut down the market for new issuance. Is this the chance for non-Chinese issuers to step up?

A new report by US-based AidData tears China’s enormous Belt and Road Initiative to pieces. The project has mired hundreds of nations in debt, much of which is hidden even from host countries, and the project is increasingly unpopular.

Global investors shrug off Evergrande’s woes and welcome a new link to China’s onshore bond market.

A consensus that Evergrande’s failure will be more like the LTCM unwind than the Lehman bankruptcy could underplay ongoing challenges in hedging Chinese exposure.

Retirement marks the end of a successful and well-timed career, and removes the most senior woman from Asian investment banking.

Global investors want to know if troubled Chinese developer Evergrande can meet its bond repayments – but far bigger risks exist, from local government bond defaults to badly run banks exposed to overleveraged developers.

China faces tough choices in the months ahead. Make the right decisions and it can become the global leader in ESG, a country determined to shed its industrial past and embrace a cleaner, greener future.

China’s use of financial acronyms began in 1980 and has since morphed into an all-out love affair that shows no sign of abating.

Evergrande is in trouble, drowning in debt and besieged by angry investors. It is bad news for shareholders, but it also raises harder and darker questions about investing in China.

China’s qualified domestic limited partnership scheme, which lets foreign asset managers raise money onshore in renminbi to invest offshore, is taking shape – but it is complex. Euromoney has some tips designed to stop you wasting time and money.

After a year of testing, China announced the rollout of a ground-breaking wealth management scheme that binds Hong Kong with Guangdong province. It should prove a boon to Hong Kong banks and mainland investors – and to Hong Kong itself.

Kevin Sneader’s next move has been widely discussed since it became clear he would serve only one term as global managing partner at McKinsey. Now that he has turned up at Goldman, it seems a logical move.

From Beijing’s plans to overhaul its small-business stock exchange to Shanghai’s push to be a global financial services leader, legislators never seem to rest in China.

The New Development Bank will add at least four new member countries next month, with the likes of Bangladesh and Egypt leading the charge to join. A concerted focus on ESG and more private-sector lending are also on the cards for the Shanghai-based multilateral.

The London-based MFO is barely a year old, but in just two months McFaddens has formed alliances in the UAE and now with CIIC, a privately owned Chinese group. It is another sign of how fast this area of high-end private wealth is growing up.

Beijing made clear this week that it is determined to stop its firms from selling shares in New York. A simultaneous crackdown on ride-hailing firm Didi also offers a timely reminder to global investors that China is no longer committed to market reforms but to ideology and sovereignty in the Xi Jinping era.

China’s lenders are keen to go green, as Ping An Bank chairman Xie Yonglin tells Euromoney. Regulators want that, too – but embracing ESG in a country still in thrall to dirty industry is easier said than done.

Paytm, whose largest shareholder is Ant Group/Alibaba, could raise India’s largest-ever IPO. It should be smoother than Ant’s own failed attempt, and that tells us something about changing regulatory positions.

Beijing’s push to rein in its fintech champions, including Ant and Tencent, shows no sign of abating. It fears these big corporations and is busy handing out record fines – yet it would be wise not to go too far and undermine all the good things they do.