November 2017 issue

November 2017 issue.

Hard-ball US-style activism is unlikely to succeed in Europe.

Investing in a sustainable matter does work – just look at the numbers.

SEC action just delays a final reckoning on the rules.

HSBC’s next chief executive must quickly show he’s the man to take the bank forward.

Just imagine if it all goes right in Brazil.

Banks face lawsuits over pay inequity as regulators now take diversity into their own hands.

The conviction of former HSBC trader Mark Johnson for front-running a customer FX order could transform the way dealers hedge client trades – and how they communicate with each other.

Banks’ third-quarter results show fixed income trading still depressed and CIB revenues mostly down, but UBS is looking remarkably perky, especially in equity capital markets. What’s up?

As Xi Jinping heralded the dawn of a new era of Chinese politics and power at the Communist party congress in Beijing in October, a forgotten but important anniversary was about to be passed.

Europe’s banking industry should pay attention to the woes of Provident Financial – its problems go to the heart of how to modernize a lending model without destroying the franchise, losing workers and racking up credit losses.

Lenders recoil at new deadlines for 100% NPL coverage; ECB throws spanner in works of Banca Carige capital raising.

In the 10 years since ICBC’s $5.5 billion acquisition of a 20% stake in South Africa’s Standard Bank Group, there has still been no bigger single China-Africa investment. Looking back now, the deal was remarkable for the speed and relative ease with which it came together. But has it worked?

It is loved by analysts and fund managers, with impeccable ratios and a market cap that sometimes trumps DBS as the largest in Asean, yet it is determinedly domestic and focused on its native Indonesia – meet Bank Central Asia.

Debt-for-equity swaps are all the rage among China’s state-owned enterprises, but it may be that households, rather than banks or insurance companies, are going to be the ones footing the bill.

A change in the interest rate environment will require a fundamental shift in mind-set from the clients of Brazil’s private banks – are they ready for it and where should they look for returns?

From integration to level playing fields: the discussions at this year’s IIF meetings in Washington were dominated by talk of combating divergence. Other familiar complaints were still present, but the overall tone was less fearful than in 2016.

Bankers see European capital markets union as more needed than ever to help drive growth in the region, but are fretting about slow progress and a scope some feel is too narrow – however, an EU official attending the Institute of International Finance meetings in Washington defended the bloc’s approach.

David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, and Jim Cowles, CEO for EMEA at Citi, discuss exclusively with Euromoney how finance can help the refugee crisis at the launch of an initiative.

Central bank governor Patrick Njoroge talks to Euromoney about the challenges of a turbulent year in Kenya and about his strategy to tackle them.

An investment fund focused on banks with a slant on Europe and Italy might sound like a recipe for disaster, but Davide Serra of Algebris tells a story of market-beating returns and snowballing AuM, and thinks the best times lie ahead.

LBBW’s new chief executive has put together an ambitious and far-reaching strategy for the state-owned German bank that will surprise many. Can his focus on corporates, international expansion, capital markets and fintech work when private-sector banks are failing?

Back in June, holders of Eurobonds bailed in during the state takeover of Ukraine’s PrivatBank last year hired a clutch of upmarket American PRs to make the case to western journalists that the nationalization was illegitimate.

Barclays CEO Jes Staley has staked his future on the ability of four markets veterans to produce a fast turnaround in performance at the firm’s investment bank.

When rates start to rise, the big action will be in credit markets. Banks are already staffing up amid efforts to unfreeze the market structure and make it easier to take on and lay off risk

BNY Mellon and HSBC hope that, in an illiquid fixed income market with no registry of beneficial owners, their asset management clients may benefit from alerts about other counterparties wishing to buy or sell bonds.

I don’t know why at first, but watching Donald Trump tell Fox News in October that because the value of the US stock market has risen by $5.2 trillion since he became president that “maybe in a sense, we are reducing the debt” makes me feel warm inside.

GDP and credit growth should offset lower NII; greater efficiencies also sought to preserve strong results.

Some 43% of US sub-investment grade lending in third quarter of this year was to borrowers rated just single-B. Now is not the time to revisit the 2013 guidelines.