Chinese M&A ambition is good news for banks chasing advisory fees but soaring debt levels give cause for concern.

Under a new CEO, investors in Italy’s biggest bank need to see shock and awe.

Banks’ experimentation with blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, is gathering pace in a fevered atmosphere.

Deutsche Bank’s John Cryan might have the toughest job in banking, but Jes Staley probably runs a close second. The Barclays CEO has had an impressive first six months, all things considered. As always, there is more to do.

Vampire squid or bank of the people? Goldman Sachs wants to win over middle America.

Markets have entered territory once thought unimaginable: a negative interest rate environment, with European interbank markets, government yield curves, and even some benchmark policy rates all below zero.

The sovereign-bank nexus or the doom loop? Whatever you like to call it, senior German and European policymakers are wrong to want to limit bank holdings of government debt.

Many investors in marketplace lending have learned the hard way about volatility in sub-prime credit.

China’s commitment to common standards for development banks is welcome news.

Argentina and Brazil are heading in opposite directions.

Lending does not offer banks an easy answer to their profits headache.

Basel’s rule-makers rely too heavily on blunt standardized measures.

DBS’s launch of a new digital bank in India provides a test case for a branchless model of banking in Asia that will influence a dozen other markets in the years ahead.

If digital payment providers share the cost of building new networks, they might profit handsomely from high volumes of low-value payments between two billion people unserved today by the world’s conventional banks, and become a new testing ground for fintech.

Two troubled rights issues should remind banks that underwriting is a discipline, not a formality.

Insurance companies will struggle to fill real asset allocations until the industry gets better at structuring infrastructure risk.

International banks are picking up the suitcase banking habit in Latin America again. They may find it hard to return.

Adair Turner, who famously took over as chairman of UK bank regulator the Financial Services Authority in September 2008, delivered a thoroughly depressing analysis of the slow and disappointing recovery from the financial crisis at the European Capital Markets Forum last month.

In the six years since Fidesz came to power, its policymakers seem to have been reluctant to miss an opportunity to convince the world of their lack of commitment to transparency and good governance.

It is the wider impacts that could undo financial firms, whatever the regulators recommend.

Mixed regulatory messages cloud the outlook after Italy’s first big bank merger since 2008.

Bank bondholders need to hope that Kazakhstan’s authorities break their habit of allowing bank defaults.

Under Michael Wolf, Swedbank has won plaudits for the rewards it has given investors and its advances in digital banking. So what brought about the former CEO’s departure?

Marketplace lending ABS is following a worryingly familiar path.

There is no need for panic. Emerging market credit is outperforming US high yield and the investor base is stable.

Whether they were birth pangs for a nascent asset class, or regulatory ripples, the latest woes in bank capital reveal the unresolved problems of the new bail-in regime.

It’s easy to blame technical factors and investors’ misunderstanding of the new AT1 market for February’s sharp sell-off across the bank sector, but investors may have a firm grasp of the fundamentals.

Even robots can be made to learn from experience nowadays. Given what happened to Hungary, Poland’s downgrade should be no surprise.

The Central Bank of Brazil is facing a credibility struggle, making it even harder for investors to predict when country’s turnaround will come.

It might not be sexy, but everyone wants in now. After all, money has to be managed.