Jon 'Mystic Mac' Macaskill takes a look at the year ahead in banking and trading

Singapore's investigations into the 1MDB scandal continue to claim more big-name scalps

Bank stocks rallied after Trump’s victory in the US election on hopes that higher trading revenue will outweigh potential disruption to global trade. A second act for traders now beckons.

Donald Trump vilified Wall Street during his presidential campaign in stump speeches and an advert that featured an image of Goldman Sachs CEO and chairman Lloyd Blankfein as a symbol of the “corrupt machine” that needed to be overthrown.

A recent $17.5 billion bond issue by Saudi Arabia was hailed as a resounding success by capital market participants who have a strong interest in further fundraising by the kingdom, including an expected IPO of Saudi Aramco that could break records with a size around $100 billion.

It seems $100 billion is the new benchmark fundraising target for firms looking to make an impact.

Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo should make clawbacks of executive compensation a priority as they try to manage crises that threaten their viability.

It has been over a month since Eric Ben-Artzi publicly declined his half share of a whistleblower award of $16.5 million for telling regulators about Deutsche Bank’s inflation of the value of a $98 billion credit derivatives portfolio during the financial crisis.

Goldman Sachs almost certainly made a good investment when it paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 for three speeches.

Unlike the contrarian investors who would welcome some creative disruption to market certainties, most bankers seem to fear the turmoil that could well follow an election victory for Donald Trump.

The case against two HSBC employees for front-running a foreign exchange order from a client could hasten the death of the principal model for FICC trading by banks. A shift to an advisory-based approach is possible, but banks will struggle to make up lost revenue.

When HSBC’s former head of global FX cash trading Mark Johnson learned that he had a window of just over 30 minutes to move the sterling exchange rate and profit from an approaching client trade, he said: “Ohhh f***ing Christmas,” according to US prosecutors.

Traders claiming to have profited from the Brexit vote were slow to identify themselves in the wake of the historic decision for the UK to leave the European Union.

Brexit will deal a mighty blow to the international and diverse City of London that has thrived for 30 years – but investment banks have bigger worries than the location of their EU offices.

SoFi is becoming increasingly reliant on former Deutsche Bank staff as it seeks to expand the use of complex financing structures to fuel growth in its loan sales.

Cheerleaders for marketplace lending took comfort from two events in late May that seemed to signal a potential recovery in a sector that had been rocked by the near failure of Lending Club, the leading listed specialist in online lending.

As Goldman Sachs released the worst first quarter results by a leading US dealer in April, it placed a video discussion with Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff in prime position on its corporate website.

Goldman Sachs had a logical, humdrum reason to acquire $16 billion of deposits from GE Capital to boost its fledgling online retail operation, GS Bank.

A botched move to take the distressed credit out of Credit Suisse and an ‘acceleration’ of the strategic plan give the impression the bank’s new leader is making it up as he goes along.

The European Central Bank’s announcement that it will extend its debt purchases to corporate bonds has given a boost to the region’s investment banks.

Deutsche Bank’s co-chief executive John Cryan may find the bonus obsession of his investment bankers hard to understand. He will need to keep them motivated if he is to have any chance of pulling off a hugely challenging turnaround plan for the bank, however.

Deutsche Bank’s co-CEO John Cryan should follow the playbook of Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters and mount a public campaign to claw back bonuses from former managers.

The Basel Committee on Bank Supervision released long-awaited guidance on a new capital regime for market risk in January. It did not, however, solve the mystery of which bank was the outlier in a study of the potential effect of a change in trading risk evaluation.

The film of The Big Short provides a welcome reminder of the glory days of Morgan Stanley’s fixed income franchise, when Howie Hubler managed to lose $9 billion on botched structured credit tranche trades.

The European Central Bank meeting in December provided a reminder that it is tough to make predictions – especially about the future. Goldman Sachs’s chief currency strategist Robin Brooks was forced to admit that he had dropped his crystal ball on his foot in predicting euro parity to the dollar by year-end and revised his forecasts for 2016 before 2015 was out. Undeterred, Euromoney’s Jon Macaskill makes his own predictions for the coming year in investment banking.

European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has been dropping further hints that he is considering unconventional measures to combat deflationary pressures in the region. This sets the stage for potential central bank buying of European corporate bonds, which in turn raises the question of whether there will be opportunities for nimble investors to game a new ‘Draghi Put’ for corporate credit.

Jes Staley can add an entry to his ‘to-do’ list for December 1, his first day as CEO of Barclays: send all staff an email about how to send emails.

Deutsche Bank co-CEO John Cryan took a clear-headed approach to most of his management overhaul in October. There are unresolved issues in the global markets unit that remains the bank’s revenue engine as well as the source of most of its reputational problems, however.

Jon Macaskill imagines how the star fund manager ruminates over his legal assault on his former Pimco colleagues.

Volkswagen’s bonds head into the red.