At the dawn of the internet of things – November 2000.

Tick-tocks in the time of excess – July 1999.

Lehman’s first fall and the foundation of Blackstone – April 1981.

When a door opened to the secretive Rothschild enclave – January 1997.

A brief case of FX problems in Africa – September 2000.

In a supposedly slow-moving industry, the amount of change in global wealth management over five decades has been remarkable.

Mark Branson, chief executive officer of Swiss financial regulator Finma, talks to Euromoney about how tax transparency has changed the trajectory of private banking and how far regulation can go in curtailing misconduct.

Jürg Zeltner, former chief executive of UBS Wealth Management, explains how the chief investment office was born out of chaos. Its introduction shifted not just UBS but the whole private banking industry to a model of professionalism.

Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman has transformed the US wealth management industry through consolidation and a rigorous management approach.

Tan Su Shan has led DBS’s efforts to become the leading home-grown bank for wealth management in Asia, during a decade in which the number of billionaires in the region has soared.

Mary Callahan Erdoes of JPMorgan speaks to Euromoney about being the port in the storm during the financial crisis and opening up the private wealth market to the whole investment industry.

The last 20 years of private banking have been all about building scale, international growth and professionalization; the top wealth managers are still getting bigger and are confident they have the right model – but as they struggle to maintain quality of service under pressure on revenues, new specialists are emerging.

In each month of our anniversary coverage, we highlight the themes and markets that have defined the past five decades

A man of words who transformed Euromoney

A front-row seat to a time of turmoil

A trip east highlights the hubris of western capital

March of the heavyweights

Storm in a Scandinavian teacup

When Euromoney interviewed a Communist icon

Getting it wrong and eventually getting it right

Tearing the mask away

Nobuyuki Hirano is the world’s most recognized and most respected Japanese banker – and the chief executive of MUFG is an articulate voice on the demographic challenges facing Japanese banking and society. He believes he has charted a path through those challenges and is an internationalist in outlook. His aim is to make MUFG the world’s most trusted financial institution. Can he succeed?

…and how wealth management can have a brighter future.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative is so vast and ambitious it can be difficult to understand how it will all work in practice – what makes a BRI undertaking, how will they be funded, will they be trophy projects or on commercial terms, how are they originated? – so Euromoney spoke to 16 institutions all looking at BRI from their own different perspectives.

There are so many challenges related to climate change, so many disparate actors required for their remedy and so much money required to do it, that it is tempting to see the whole situation as unfixable. Perhaps that is why some of the countries most vulnerable to climate change are not willing to talk about it. There is one positive counterbalance: all the ingredients needed to meet climate finance goals are available. But getting the money where it needs to go, with private capital alongside, will require a level of global coordination rarely seen.

Alibaba, Alipay, Ant Financial – by now everyone in banking knows the triumvirate of brands that have transformed financial services in China, and the domestic story is only the start. Going global will be Ant Financial’s biggest-ever test, with tougher markets, tighter regulation and a whole new world of risk management. But it is nothing if not ambitious.

Arundhati Bhattacharya already had one of the toughest jobs in India as chairman of State Bank of India. Not only is it the country’s largest financial institution, but it is also woven inextricably into India’s social fabric. She has made her job harder still by proposing a seven-sided bank merger. But as technological innovation increases and as asset quality plunges across public banks, bigger may not necessarily be better.

Results index It is time to acknowledge a home-grown banking champion that, while still lacking the pan-Asian scope of some international rivals, has demonstrated consistent excellence and a commitment to innovation. At a time when many western banks are in retreat from Asia, it is right to applaud one that is increasing market penetration almost everywhere it attempts to do business.

Default? What default? Asia Pulp & Paper, Sinar Mas and the Widjaja family, once pariahs of the international financial markets, have bounced back with a vengeance. Are the memories of the banks financing them too short? Or are they backing a group that can deliver on both its repurposed business and environmental credentials?

The saga of scandalized Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB has drawn in many high-profile figures from the country’s establishment. None more so than a flamboyant, Hong Kong-based tycoon. But the self-styled Jho Low denies all involvement in 1MDB. Now he’s ready to publicly defend himself – and point the finger of blame at others.