Investment strategists seem convinced that the euro crisis is over and European equities will outperform in 2014 as growth returns. There are clear and present dangers to this cosy consensus view and the banks are still at the heart of the problem.

Asia’s new wealth is illiquid and no great source of profit; Consolidation inevitable among private banks

Disappointing end-2013 performance; McKinsey analysis predicts long-term issuance growth

Monoline wrap for pool of SME risk; firms pay up for five-year tenor.

EP chair presses on with regulatory proposals; seeks parliament’s oversight of ECB.

Capital inflow down; Brazilian investor outflow up; Increasing cooperation between Brazilian and foreign asset managers

Will Paul Volcker, author of the rule that has banned banks from proprietary trading, now stand up, perhaps beside Gary Gensler, recently departed head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and lambast banks for not trading enough?

€31 billion AT1 needs to be issued by end-2014; Benchmark inclusion key to future appetite

Given I am writing this column in December just before the magazine closes for Christmas – I have been pondering what presents I would give certain bank chief executives.

Friday 13th is not normally a day when you’d do anything risky. But this December, in London, it was decreed to be ‘Wear your Christmas jumper to work day’.

We like a bit of Christmas spirit as much as the next guy: tequila and bourbon being particular favourites. But the Euromoney office’s latest Christmas card haul left us slightly underwhelmed and, in some cases, just plain confused.

The Financial Times recently ran a video on its website about the power of hair.

Someone else who also recently stepped down is Sir Hector Sants, the former head of compliance at Barclays. Sants, a one-time Credit Suisse banker, ran the wholesale division of the British regulatory authority, the Financial Services Authority, from 2004 to 2007. He was then promoted to run the whole organization, which he did until the FSA was dismantled in the middle of 2012.

Anyway, back to Switzerland and the Swiss banks. Things do appear to be stabilizing at UBS. Sergio Ermotti was appointed chief executive in late 2011 and a year later he installed the long-term Merrill Lynch banker Andrea Orcel as head of UBS’s investment bank. UBS underwent an epiphany and scaled its fixed-income division back drastically. The new focus was to be wealth management and corporate finance, which would hopefully flourish untainted by scandals in the fixed-income division. However, in the third quarter of 2013, UBS suffered a setback. The bank announced that it would delay, by at least a year, its aim to reach a 15% group return-on-equity target. This retreat was due to an unexpected demand from the Swiss regulator, Finma, requiring UBS to set aside more capital against "known and unknown litigation".

As the World Cup shapes up to be the main sporting event of 2014, Euromoney columnist Jon Macaskill looks at comparisons between investment banks and football teams for clues to competitive match-ups in the year ahead.

I was interested that the renowned banker James Leigh-Pemberton, who used to head Credit Suisse’s UK operations, left the bank late last year to become chairman designate of UK Financial Investments, the British government unit that manages the taxpayer shareholdings in Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland.

It was a dank, dark autumn morning. My alarm shrilled and I stumbled into the kitchen to brew a pitch-black espresso. On auto-pilot, I reached over and switched on CNBC. Someone was lamenting the most recent "disappointing" set of Credit Suisse earnings. "Same old, same old," I thought to myself as I grumpily switched off the television.

Will 2014 be 1987 all over again? As the equity rally enters its fifth year, parallels are inevitable. But while a short-lived cyclical bear market could happen this year, the secular outlook is likely to remain bullish.

The spectrum of indicator evidence points to a rally through the first quarter of 2014. But the outlook could worsen if valuations start to look stretched as the year’s second quarter approaches.

European equities have caught up with historical valuations; now they need earnings-related growth.

The renminbi’s impressive rise this year as a global trade finance currency is a positive development for a critical market that has been buffeted hard in recent years by limp demand and financial regulation.

The investigation by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), uncovering alleged flaws in the sovereign-ratings process, could presage a more intrusive supervisory regime, rekindling the debate about their role in global financial markets.

The rationale for a higher benchmark is clear but regulators must clarify its role, alongside a risk-based capital regime, to reduce distortions and save the securities-financing market from a liquidity crisis.

Identifying countries ripe for an investment-grade rating is a complicated task, with the main rating agencies differing in their assessments of credit risk. Euromoney’s Country Risk Survey highlights several borrowers with bright prospects, having successfully predicted the shift from junk status to investment grade for the Philippines earlier this year.