With HSBC having reported on Monday, the last of the 2Q18 results are in for the 12 main global corporate and investment banks; now for part 1 of our number-crunch

The smooth chief executive transition at Goldman Sachs will increase scrutiny on the potential succession to Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan.

In a tightly contested award, we seriously considered six names for best advisory bank this year. Goldman Sachs won out in something of a comeback after a difficult couple of years in Asia.

Australia

The bulge-bracket firms are back in Latin America – and their resolve will surely be tested over the next 12 months.

Deutsche Bank’s failure of the recent Federal Reserve stress tests drew attention, but while the regulator was happy to kick the battered European bank while it is down, this was in stark contrast to its treatment of favoured home-town players Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

While BAML and Citi are both reaping rewards from maintaining commitment and presence in the region, the winner of the best bank for advisory is probably the Wall Street firm most synonymous with retreat there. Goldman Sachs has invested and divested from the region as its fortunes waxed and waned, but this year saw a very positive return. Led by Gonzalo Garcia and Ram Sundaram, co-heads of Latin America, the bank has thrown resources and balance sheet at the region. It has paid off.

When it comes to big, transformative cross-border M&A deals, no firm matches Goldman

Austria

Investment bank steps in as BNDES stops crowding out; an important first in local-denominated financing of large project puts down marker.

Goldman Sachs delivered strong first-quarter trading results that were followed by a reorganization of the management of its securities division.

The coming move towards a Volcker Rule 2.0 that relaxes monitoring of proprietary risk taking by bank dealing desks has been portrayed as a result of president Donald Trump’s administration finally placing its preferred officials in key regulatory positions.

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Euromoney magazine has released the results of its 40th annual foreign exchange ranking, the most comprehensive quantitative and qualitative annual study available on the FX markets.

Inside the LIA’s litigious pursuit of Gaddafi-era investments brokered by Western financial institutions as it brings controversial claims against Goldman Sachs, a Dutch asset manager and Société Générale.

An unusual move by a US regulator threatens to widen a conflict over potential manipu-lation of Hovnanian default swaps by Blackstone’s credit arm GSO.

If the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does decide to weigh in on the issue of whether or not Blackstone’s trading in Hovnanian debt and default swaps constitutes market manipulation, it will revive questions about SEC chairman Jay Clayton’s ties to Goldman Sachs.

New sole president’s success in building non-traditional strengths put him ahead of rival Schwartz

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein wants to remind everyone of the importance of non-static resource commitments – and how they can move in both directions.

The recent disclosure that rare wine worth more than $1.2 million was stolen from Goldman Sachs co-president David Solomon, allegedly by a personal assistant, raises questions about which other Wall Street titans may have suffered the indignity of losses they would rather not discuss.

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UBS Wealth Management voted best global private bank; private banks more bullish on revenues; hiring to increase.

While tax reform charges make a bad year worse for US banks, the timing of the law sets the scene for better results in 2018. But the fundamentals may not change: trading is bad, financing is good.

As GSO’s controversial Hovnanian refinancing ends up in court, the wider credit default swap (CDS) market is the loser.

Converting boardroom dialogue into a corporate FICC franchise is not as easy as it sounds – even for Goldman Sachs.

Banks are booking big charges in the fourth quarter, but the domestic names are sitting pretty for the future as US taxes fall.

Blankfein still needs to fix FICC, but the firm has other challenges

Investor Access, the electronic book-building initiative run by US-based fintech Ipreo, celebrated its first year of operation in early November with some healthy usage statistics.

New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority and the country’s stock exchange are working to impose voice recording for traders after market-manipulation investigations highlighted limitations in the regime.

The Goldman Sachs chief shows how less can be much, much more.