The good, the bad and the new of Putin’s third term.

US banks that move on Europe’s woes will reap large gains.

Local presence – and particularly local distribution – will be crucial to gaining market share in growing equity markets.

Corporates used to be at the risky end of the credit spectrum, with governments supposedly risk-free and banks benefiting from implicit sovereign support. That order is now inverted.

Turmoil in the Spanish banking sector raises the threat of substantial losses for subordinated bondholders.

Assumption is that central bank liquidity will keep on coming.

Italian banks may have no choice but to consolidate.

Secondary market illiquidity is taking its toll in Europe.

An end to the proliferation of bookrunners will be a vital aspect of the resurgence of Asian IPOs.

New regulation of M&A in Brazil will add uncertainty to an already weakening merger market.

There are too many banks for sale in emerging Europe, and not enough buyers.

As banks returned to the primary bond markets and their stocks rallied through the first quarter of 2012. Michel Barnier, European commissioner for internal markets and services, felt sufficiently confident to move ahead with the design of bail-in procedures for writing down bank debt in the event of imminent failure.

Banks’ misgivings about the Jobs Act reflect their own failure to cater to the full spectrum of US enterprise.

Chinese broker’s Hong Kong listing fails to revitalize the market.

Banks enjoyed a good end to the first quarter in equity capital markets, but the benign conditions that prompted deals might have come to an end.

Figures from Dealogic suggest that bankers covering EEMEA should not get carried away with the realities of the Middle East and Africa.

There needs to be universal agreement on what is shadow banking to tackle its regulation.

BTG Pactual’s IPO offered lessons to other Brazilian issuers about pricing discipline, and to other partnership banks about ownership structures.

Banks’ misgivings about the Jobs Act reflect their own failure to cater to the full spectrum of US enterprise

With Brazil's central bank cutting interest rates, research from BAML shows that Alexandre Tombini may be right to be more concerned about growth than inflation.

Persuading any issuer to break the impasse is proving remarkably difficult for Asia’s ECM houses

RBS signed a memorandum of understanding last month for the sale of its cash equities, ECM and corporate finance businesses in Asia. It was signed not with a western multinational, or an Australian such as Macquarie, but with Malaysia’s CIMB.

Rallying stock markets haven’t boosted M&A volumes, and for advisers’ revenues to pick up strongly they might require more bank M&A, something regulators are not keen on.

Brazil’s finance minister should prepare for a fiscal – not currency – fight.

The world needs a bank with strong backing and a proper network in the frontier markets of Africa and the Arab world.

Until the exact nature of the rules is clear, investors will continue to find hybrid bank capital a challenge.

Even as Iceland’s economy improves, moves to dismiss the country’s bank regulator reveal continuing institutional weakness.

It could be nine months between Brazil’s last IPO and its next, leading investors to urge banks to do a better job of reining in candidates’ pricing expectations.

Emerging market Eurobond issuance is on the up. But bankers in emerging Europe, the Middle East and Africa – including in Russia – might be disappointed.

Credit Suisse’s Q4 loss and disappointing return for 2011 says as much about the state of the industry as it does about the bank.