For decades, transaction banking was a profitable but largely ignored corner of the banking industry. Then Covid happened. Today, bank chiefs see it as critical to everything they do. Given the challenges ahead – collaborating with fintechs and embedding ESG principles in global supply chains – the revolution under way in this business is unstoppable.

After years of easy Eurobond access and ramped-up Chinese lending, developing economies are now caught between rising interest rates and geopolitical tensions, making debt restructurings more numerous and more complicated. Despite some progress in inter-creditor talks, many debtor nations face an uncertain financial future.

Outbound Chinese M&A deal-flow has slowed to a crawl even as inbound activity remains steady. So focus in the region is moving elsewhere: to rising India, steady-and-lucrative Australia and even Japan, where once-bloated conglomerates are streamlining portfolios under intense pressure from activist shareholders.

Despite its roots in the region, HSBC’s Asian woes have sometimes seemed endemic. It has been overly dependent on Hong Kong and too often caught in Sino-US crosshairs. But under regional co-CEOs Surendra Rosha and David Liao, the lender has regained its confidence, is more regionally diverse than ever, and is busy posting record profits.

The investment firm founded by securitization experts in 2015 has grown to an $8 billion portfolio of 60 companies without managing any third-party funds and still sees big potential returns, notably in football clubs, from applying the discipline of structured finance to operating businesses.

BlackRock, JPMorgan and McKinsey are working on plans for a new development finance institution focused on Ukraine’s reconstruction. The project has already had to temper some ambitions, but its advisers still hope it can propel flows of private-sector money to Ukraine in years to come.

Wealth management had a tough 2022. Assets under management fell across the board, undermined by global uncertainty. But one region is not struggling. More wealth than ever is being formed in the Middle East, and more of it than ever is staying there. Private banks are hiring as fast as they can and expanding their repertoire in Shariah-compliant asset classes.

Trade and currency wars have boosted Brazil’s agribusiness sector in the past couple of years. Higher prices for soft commodities have, however, accelerated a trend that has been noticeable for many years: the country’s inward focus.

Veteran Morgan Stanley investment bankers describe this as the busiest downturn they have ever seen. That is because they have worked on the biggest and most transformative deals in 12 months of shifting values and at times paralyzing uncertainty. The firm has made some cuts, but its new leaders are shaking the business up and bringing in the talent that will be in demand once markets settle.

BNP Paribas has a well-earned reputation for steadiness and stability. In the past year, its chief executive, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, has also reinforced his strategic credentials with the bank’s well-timed exit from its US retail business. Today, the bank stands as the eurozone leader on the global stage and is ready to play a pivotal role in the continent’s financial development.

Christian Sewing has turned Deutsche Bank around. The firm has a resilience now that would have seemed unlikely when he was appointed chief executive five years ago. By his own admission, some of the toughest work is still to be done. But the past year and the most recent banking crisis have provided a striking validation of the strategy he set in place.

What African fintechs need is supportive regulation, local capital and the development of talent. Singapore wants to show them the way.

The green transition is boosting demand for key metals and Africa’s commodity markets are under pressure to increase extraction. But buyer awareness of Scope 3 emissions means that processes need to be cleaned up and fast.

When Credit Suisse is taken over by UBS, it’s likely that the new parent’s appetite for structured private credit will be significantly different to that of the institution it is absorbing. Two banks in particular are waiting for the opportunity that follows.

Issuance has barely stopped in Indonesia’s IPO market this year. Global investors have bought into the resource-led story with glee – and there are plenty of deals in the pipeline.

The country’s economy was already weak before a serious drought hit. Now it is broke, and the question in Buenos Aires isn’t whether finance minister Sergio Massa can muddle through to the presidential election at the end of October, it is whether he can make it to the primaries in August before a full-blown financial crisis.

Indonesia is one of the world’s brighter prospects right now: growth, demographics, infrastructure momentum, inflation under control, more equity raised in the first quarter in Jakarta than New York. Banks are positioning to benefit – while keeping an eye on next year’s elections.

Fears were already growing about dangers lurking in US commercial real estate even before the wave of turmoil that has hit banks in the last two months. After the pandemic and a rush of rate hikes, there is little debate that the sector is at a turning point – the question is whether something worse is on the horizon.

As the Gulf IPO boom subsides, will better allocations for international investors, dual listings and better secondary-market liquidity be enough to ensure that the region’s equity capital markets can mature?

The US regional banking system has just sustained its third bank collapse this year. Following an initial sharp slump in reaction to the news, bank stocks have continued to fall as short sellers target perceived weakness. Can the sector stabilize as the impact of rate rises on many of these lenders’ business models becomes apparent?

Jordan Kuwait Bank has issued the country’s first green bond, a key milestone for sustainability driven capital investments in the country. But getting momentum going in the sector will be an uphill battle.

US banks have seen $1.1 trillion in deposits flee the system over the past year. Much of this wound up in money-market funds that offer higher returns and the promise of safety and stability at a time of rising uncertainty. How dangerous is this for US lenders, and what can they do to convince flighty deposits to return to the banking system?

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has fuelled an abrupt end to venture-capital exuberance. There are vital implications for fintech and for the banking industry.

UBS will face pressure to spin off Credit Suisse’s Swiss bank and may yet lose more private-banking assets. Coping with this will make managing down illiquid and hard-to-value markets positions look easy.

The cost of regulatory capital associated with lending will keep rising after the recent scare over deposit flight and the coming credit downturn. The solution for banks is to reduce risk-weighted assets on their balance sheets by buying protection from credit funds eager to diversify away from leveraged loans.

The recent spate of deposit flight that spread panic through the banking systems of the US and Europe opens a chance for non-bank lenders to seize more of the core businesses that banks want to retain. Central bank emergency measures may have prevented the crisis from spreading, but a new phase of disintermediation has begun.

The country’s banking system seems as solid as ever, but its banks are seeing an uptick in delinquencies that could spin out of control.

As soon as the ink was dry on the agreement to take over Credit Suisse, UBS chairman Colm Kelleher rushed to bring ex-CEO Sergio Ermotti back to run the bank and the deal. Execution risk is off the charts, and the nerves of shareholders, employees and taxpayers are jangling.

The echoes of 2014 have been loud in Brazil’s private banking industry over the past 12 months. A precipitous fall in interest rates – followed by a meteoric rise – has left the market completely the same but also very different.

Pure-play Swiss private bank Julius Baer has had to reconfigure its business model for the 2020s. Chief executive Philipp Rickenbacher talks to Euromoney about why scale and nurturing talent are key to the long-term success of a firm that does just one thing and one thing well: serving wealthy private clients.