The Belt and Road Initiative offers much to the disparate markets of the Middle East and Africa, but not all those countries seem so enthusiastic in return.

At the vanguard of the funding effort for the Belt and Road Initiative will be China’s state-owned commercial banks. All eyes are upon them and their lending practices. Will they be expected to pour funds into projects with a tenuous economic rationale in the interests of state policy? Or will they instead be able to assess BRI projects as they would any other enterprise, with a weighing up of risk and return and a commercial decision at the end of it?

China has plenty of engines to get Belt and Road underway: Export–Import Bank of China, the China Development Bank, the enormous state-owned lenders. But it needs a dedicated, wealthy, powerful and politically enabled body to be the driver of the whole enterprise, and that is the Silk Road Fund.

If there is one message Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) chairman Jin Liqun wants you to take away about Belt and Road, it is that AIIB is not the same thing. It is not the Silk Road Fund either. Despite what is widely said in international discussions, these things are not synonymous.

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.

Itaú BBA has long been a top investment bank in Brazil. Recently, rumours of high turnover, a changing culture and low morale have been rife. But Roderick Greenlees, head of investment banking, says the bank remains an undisputed market leader.

Euromoney's latest coverage of emerging markets, including FX, fixed income and equity market trends.

Eurozone stress has been felt most acutely in the so-called periphery, but investors should look at the core of the European Union.

The region’s investment banking market, as ever, remains more tilted to the Gulf, which has recently been less active in blockbuster sovereign wealth-fund M&A mandates and more vigorous in public-sector financing as the lower oil price has bitten.

New marketplace for impact investments; industry in need of institutional clout.

To keep the spirit of impact investing, it is worth opening up the terminology to be more inclusive of a myriad of strategies.

Continental Europe’s top corporate and investment banks showed just how far they continue to trail their US peers as they reported annual results in February.

The swift formation of a new government and the opportunities created by the pound’s fall have quietened the doomsayers. But risk experts have downgraded their views on the economic outlook and government stability after the referendum, with so much that is still unknown.

Advice sought on new fund; Shoura eyes GOSI shake-up.

Performance varies widely; Clients still boosting allocations.

Guarantees to aid private sector flows; BNDES scaling back but still dominant player.

Pressure from large investors to lower costs; performance flat but few alternatives.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have been presented chiefly as an opportunity on the equity side, but both markets are attracting interest from the fixed income community as well.

Asia’s growing band of big, local investment banks won’t let short-term market fluctuations affect their planned transitions from national to regional leadership

In establishing its sovereign wealth fund, Mongolia had a wide range of forebears to learn from. Singapore’s Temasek may not be the best choice.

Two years ago, John Hourican took over a bank flattened by haircuts on Greek bonds, whose depositors had seen their money seized and where borrowers were defaulting en masse. Somehow, through determination, hard work and maybe a little luck, he turned it round. Deposits are coming back, NPLs are being dealt with, assets shed and capital raised. The bank is profitable and confidence has been restored. As John Hourican steps down as CEO, the story of our banker of the year for 2015 is also one of redemption.

ING’s chief executive walks and talks digital. Today he leads a stronger, freer institution – one that is using pure online banking to grab customers from incumbents. While the bank grows as a force in lending to industry around the world, it is also building up an SME and consumer-lending portfolio in some of Europe’s biggest retail markets

Well-functioning stock market; structural surprises still likely.

Four intellectual revolutions have undermined our sense of self, but anomie and profits are not incompatible.

US firms named best bank and best investment bank; Hourican takes banker of the year award; ICBC’s Jiang rewarded for outstanding contribution to global financial services.

Third-quarter gloom for gold; silver ‘a better bet’.

So far in 2015 we have been witnessing death by a thousand policy rate cuts around the world. That is turning the US Federal Reserve’s dream of rate normalization into a dystopian nightmare.

With expanding economies and hundreds of million Muslims, Africa deserves to be a bigger part of Islamic finance. After a slow start, there are signs the sector is beginning to gain the crucial mass and legislative backing it needs.

As investment in technology becomes a priority for financial institutions, they are having to look for the right experience among board members and rethink their structure to ensure they are on top of innovation.

The investment potential in Africa has long been discussed but finally the hype is turning into reality. Regional private equity firms are beginning to convert their local knowledge of Africa’s subcontinent into cash. But there are still many obstacles to establishing a thriving business in sub-Saharan Africa.