With venture capital flooding in, the world’s biggest neobanks are more confident than ever. They still face serious questions about their long-term profitability and regulators are certainly paying them more attention, but amid the upheaval of Covid-19, freedom from legacy infrastructure has proved even more important than ever. The incumbents are rightly worried.

This time last year, Euromoney recognized progress at Deutsche Bank as the best transformation story of 2020. Twelve months on, the German lender might be getting its act together at last. Can it sustain its recovery?

A new anti-money laundering centre housed in the Baltic state’s central bank is growing and hiring fast. It aims to turn Lithuania into an AML hub – and to address and reverse the region’s questionable reputation.

Digital identities are evolving fast as lenders, tech firms and governments roll out platforms to make it easier to shop, invest and constantly prove who you are. Banks – still trusted despite myriad scandals and crises – are at the heart of this process: a situation that is unlikely to change.

Barclays wants to be compared with the big five US investment banks. So let’s do that.

This year’s FX survey reflects huge disruption and transition across the industry. Pandemic-driven technological advances saw traders tackle a surge in business while working remotely – supercharging change that will permanently alter the way the industry operates.

We are at the peak of the hype cycle for central bank digital currencies, now being touted as one of the most fundamental innovations in the history of central banking. It is time for central banks and governments to be honest with unenthused populations. CBDC can’t deliver all the many promised improvements. As we come to design choices, there will be trade-offs. We might get improved payments but less credit. We could see greater financial inclusion but will lose privacy. Are the few benefits really worth the risk of disrupting the financial system?

Uche Orji is approaching 10 years as head of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, a sophisticated institution segregated into three very different funds. Covid spurred a year of outstanding market returns, but now Orji’s focus is on domestic infrastructure before he steps down next year.

Non-resident Indians are a powerful force in wealth management from New York to Singapore. But as the pandemic devastates the subcontinent, this vast diaspora is reassessing its priorities.

Private equity has been slow to join the ESG revolution. More firms are waking up to the opportunities on offer as well as the downside risks.

Hitesh Anadkat has spent the last 25 years building an African SME banking empire from scratch from his base in the Malawian city of Blantyre. His FMB Capital Group now also has operations in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Mauritius and Botswana; and he is looking to gain market share in them all.

From an opening with just two stocks, in a little over two decades Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange has risen to a $200 billion market capitalisation.

As Vietnam’s public markets become more accessible, what happens to those who have built their success in private markets?

The country may soon be upgraded to the emerging market indices. But such are the market’s many anomalies, that the pioneers who first embraced its potential are still the ones that matter most today.

The US Federal Reserve has been clear that its policy of quantitative easing will only change when the data on unemployment and inflation changes. Meanwhile pressure from this policy is building in the banking sector, as well as the treasury and repo markets. As bank chief executives prepare to make their case to the Senate banking committee, is it time for Fed chair Jerome Powell to think again?

Barclays has long wanted to rebuild the European ECM franchise it got rid of in 1997 with the sale of BZW, but has often struggled to do so. With a foundation of corporate broking in the UK and hiring in continental Europe, it’s finally making some progress.

Barclays has rediscovered its appetite for its markets business under CEO Jes Staley. Macro head Michael Lublinsky says there are now encouraging opportunities in emerging markets and corporate FX.

Two years ago, Barclays began to build a dedicated sustainable investment banking coverage group. Aimed at emerging growth companies, as well as the bank’s mature large cap clients, it’s a big element of a wider collaboration effort at Barclays.

Barclays’ Asia investment bank is rebuilding after a traumatic restructuring in 2016. After a few years of steady growth, a more focused approach could make it more efficient than before.

The surprise exit of Absa chief executive Daniel Mminele in April, only 15 months into the job, shows how much the South African group is still finding its way in the post-Barclays era. Mminele – Absa’s first black CEO – was seen in some quarters as losing a power struggle against an overwhelmingly white executive team. Can the next chief executive gain the authority to drive Absa’s revival?

Since Jes Staley took charge of Barclays at the end of 2015, he has faced constant questions over his ability to reposition the firm as a credible force in investment banking. Sticking to his guns in the face of activist shareholder pressure, he now looks vindicated, but growing from here presents a new challenge.

Years of tough but successful IMF-led reforms have put Egypt in a great place to rebound strongly from Covid. Its future will be shaped by big infrastructure projects and by a plan to transform the nation into a powerhouse of green finance.

BBVA is relying more on its Latin America business. And the countries in that region are relying more and more on the global bank in turn. BBVA’s global head of country monitoring, Jorge Sáenz-Azcúnaga, explains how he expects this symbiosis to evolve.

The implosion of Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management focused attention on family offices, a fast-growing, lightly regulated and ill-defined investor group. Greater oversight is surely inevitable, as is the evolution of the sector away from small, standalone entities into truly global multi-family wealth managers.

The country’s model of financing relentless consumption from dwindling oil revenues is under attack from all sides. Covid-related credit relief has hit the banks’ bottom lines and they are joining the call for diversification.

The implosion of Archegos has ripped away the veneer of conservatism and safety that the family office has long enjoyed. It has also emphasized the lack of clarity about what the industry is and its lack of oversight.

Kentaro Okuda had been delivering. Nomura was reporting strong and sustainable profits, with a streamlined international business driven by trading in the Americas. Then came Archegos.

US hedge funds have cleared the way for more activist-style investing in European financial institutions. Now some home-grown activist funds are targeting banks too. They will need to adapt their tactics, but underperforming bank chief executives have another reason to be worried.

A sign of too much risk and exposure in a frothy market or just two banks that didn’t have their risk management in order? Prime brokerage has become a profitable mainstay for several banks but, as Archegos shows us, it punishes the distracted

Low interest rates, lockdown boredom and super-sophisticated trading apps have lured millions of Russian retail investors into the capital markets over the past year. But will they stay for the long term?