Financial providers are pushing to identify new higher-margin services, while remaining relevant to corporate partners and boosting profitability in a disruptive digital age. Meanwhile, across the Middle East economies, governments want to diversify away from oil and gas, creating opportunities for multinationals, regional banks and export credit agencies.

It won’t be long before banks are going to be answering to the public about their role in advising clients on tax avoidance.

December 2017 issue.

December 2017 issue.

As we drift towards the end of the year, conferences seem to be full of panels on asset allocation for the 12 months ahead: sometimes a bold investor will go so far as to say what they invest in themselves; sometimes that’s a surprise.

Jon ‘Mystic Mac’ Macaskill looks ahead at possible highlights for markets in 2018.

Nordea shares big problems with other big European banks – it offers no easy solution to them.

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.

Primary issuance back to 2013 levels; private-sector names prove popular with investors

After a surprise move to make reports more transparent in the US, investors will finally have the chance to scrutinize some auditors’ decisions

Marisa Drew has gone from being one of Credit Suisse’s most senior investment bankers to overseeing the Swiss group’s new global impact finance and advisory division, reporting directly to group chief executive Tidjane Thiam. Clients are curious. Should competitors take note?

The 2017 US proxy voting season was historic: the world’s two largest asset managers backed shareholder resolutions on climate-risk disclosure. BlackRock and Vanguard, with $10 trillion in AuM between them, are becoming more transparent about their voting. They will play a crucial role in the future of ESG.

A pair of multibillion-dollar bank bailouts in under a month has roiled Russia’s banking sector and raised questions about the regulator’s competence – Dmitry Tulin, the central bank’s new head of banking supervision, insists such criticism is misguided.

The mood among bankers attending Felaban’s annual conference in November was conspicuously relaxed. Why relaxed? Well, business is good

As European banks are recovering, Nordic banks are facing perhaps their biggest challenge since the 2008 crisis. Their time as the darlings of the sector may be over

Recapitalization bonds will repair balance sheets; next step will be writing off bad loans

India’s biggest fintech has doubled its user base in a year and is on track to have 500 million customers by 2020. It is backed by Ant Financial and Softbank and spurred by state policy on financial inclusion. How far can Paytm go?

As retail and high net-worth investors embrace cryptocurrency, delta one synthetics allow institutionals to allocate to this new asset class, but sceptics say that cryptocurrency is an immature market. They warn that catastrophic losses in crypto could destabilize the regular equity, commodity, debt and currency markets.

In wealth management circles, the shock isn’t so much that Collardi has moved – rather, it’s the rival he has moved to.

Banks in the eurozone will not be able to count any of their English-law bail-inable debt toward their pending requirements if no Brexit deal is reached between the EU and UK – translating into some €126 billion of subordinated bonds.

DNB set up payments application Vipps just two and half years ago and has seen its in-house disruptor grow so fast that it has now spun it out and let it merge with other fintechs.

Attempts to refocus the global banking division led to culture clashes at an institution that is notoriously hard to bend to an individual’s will.

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.

Analysts are glowing in their praise of Piyush Gupta’s digital strategy – how has he done it?

An investment company linked to one of Iran’s largest investment banks failed to publicly disclose its focus on Iran when it listed on NEX Exchange, though it always intended to invest primarily in that country.

Country predicted to be fastest-growing economy; political stability and renewed public investment should lead to demand for credit.

The first rule of Finance Fight Night is to write about Finance Fight Night.

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

It has been two years since the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was announced, but there are still companies unaware of how wide-ranging the changes they need to make are and how little time they have left to make them.

The UK regulator thinks that bond markets could step up their approach to reporting market abuse