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LATEST ARTICLES
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Having taken a hammering following Mexico’s election results and the Brazilian president's comments on fiscal consolidation, the prospects for the key Latin American currencies over the remainder of 2024 are unclear.
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Proponents of banking-as-a-service will be hoping that UniCredit’s decision to acquire Aion Bank and Vodeno marks a turning point in a sector that has experienced considerable volatility.
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Investing in Latin America’s payment fintechs is having a moment – but will the region’s central banks kill off their revenue model by adopting their own version of Brazil’s PIX?
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New institutional investors are providing liquidity to longstanding Revolut employees and giving a valuation proof point to its stunning revenue and profit growth.
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Transaction banks in Asia will have to up their game to satisfy corporates who now view a strong digital offering as a prerequisite to maintaining relationships.
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National champion banks should worry that the latest surveys commissioned by the Competition and Markets Authority might prompt loss of more primary accounts.
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Falling inflation has sparked an early surge in credit demand, which offers the prospect of banking normalization – a potential boon given the negative real interest rates banks are earning on their government securities portfolios.
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Corporates, asset managers and hedge funds appear to be willing to work with FX service providers to improve the latter’s offerings despite concerns over core services.
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New transition bond includes step-down, as new ‘green infrastructure’ bond issued.
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The bank's new CEO has posted his first market-beating quarterly results, but the firm's exposure to lower-income segments could limit longer-term upside.
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Unable to sell companies or raise new funds, desperate private equity managers are funding distributions from debt at the portfolio level. That structurally subordinates limited partners. They don’t like it – and neither do regulators.
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Huge international debt capital market issuance in September and October is forecast as investors may seek to take any US Treasury benefit through wider spreads.
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A perfect storm – triggered by the Sahm Rule, AI-driven transactions and the unwinding of the yen carry trade – sent the Japanese and global stock markets on a wild ride. While the Bank of Japan gains more flexibility to raise rates after the unwinding, investors remain optimistic about the long-term prospects of Japanese equities.
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As multinationals navigate the complexities of developing Asian businesses – amid supply-chain reconfigurations, the rise of sustainable financing and the penetration of e-commerce – treasurers are playing a bigger role in strategic decision-making.
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Buying Axa IM would be BNP Paribas chief executive Jean-Laurent Bonnafé’s biggest acquisition. It has been a long time in the making.
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Alongside UniCredit’s recent acquisition of Polish financial technology company Vodeno, the US private equity takeover of VeloBank is another sign of renewed optimism in Poland.
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The spike in bitcoin after the shooting at a Donald Trump election rally was a reminder that for all the claims of increased maturity, the world’s largest cryptocurrency remains unpredictable.
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After years of being off the table due to historically low interest rates, treasurers can now realistically look to profit from rate differentials between currencies.
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India’s wealth-management sector is growing fast, with new advisory firms constantly springing up. This is catnip to private equity firms keen to invest in the best growth-oriented private banks. But who will win this race and who will fall short?
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Banks are refining their single-dealer platforms to replicate the price comparison benefits of the multi-dealer model while accentuating the former’s unique features.
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The disconnect between global economic growth and commodity prices is focusing treasurers’ minds on hedging exposures to everything from cocoa to cobalt.
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HSBC’s choice of a new CEO to replace Noel Quinn was long flagged. Elhedery’s fortune is to be handed the reins of power in an extended period of calm for the UK lender, which benefited immensely from Quinn’s calm stoicism. But deteriorating Sino-US relations mean that turbulence for the London- and Hong Kong-listed lender is sure to return.
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The Singapore state-owned fund has unveiled plans to invest $10 billion in India and to plough more capital into the US and Japan. At the same time, it is quietly retreating from China, once its largest investment market, but now beset by underperforming capital markets, weak growth and bleak consumption data.
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Bankruptcies in the buy-now-pay-later market, together with tighter regulation, present an opportunity for banks to steal a march on pure-play providers.
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The bank’s decision to sell a large minority stake in Credit Suisse’s former China JV to BSAM, a Beijing-based fund it has known for decades, is a setback for Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities. The US firm is still committed to expanding in China’s troubled market.
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Currency volatility benchmarking has become a useful tool for FX traders but is by no means the only option for informing trades.
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The limitations of the Alternative Investment Market are forcing many companies to explore other sources of funding. Nevertheless, there is optimism that the market for small and medium-sized growth companies can be revived.
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CEO Leandro Miranda tells Euromoney that the firm will use recently granted CVM license and secured deal mandates to raise equity.
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Basel-endgame pushback has reduced the urgency for US banks to relieve capital, but investor appetite for significant risk transfer trades is spilling over to Europe.
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Mamerto Tangonan, the deputy governor and head of the payments and currency management sector at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, tells Euromoney how southeast Asian countries are using advances in digital payments to revolutionize cross-border transactions.
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There is pressure on corporate treasurers to maximise the benefits of embedded finance, despite the lack of additional resources.
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The region’s tough economic history, coupled with its strength in soft and hard commodities, makes it best positioned to tackle today’s challenges.
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The immediate aftermath of the launch of T+1 settlement in the US on May 28 suggests the acceleration has not yet translated into increased FX risk. But it is still too early to tell what the longer-term impact will be.
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Despite an overwhelmingly Italian business in retail, Intesa Sanpaolo has stepped up its share of corporate and investment banking revenue outside the country. In its global growth markets, divisional chief Mauro Micillo says the firm is here to stay.
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With corporates taking a more holistic view of sustainability, banks are under pressure to address concerns over reporting and verification requirements for sustainable working capital, trade finance and liquidity management products.
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Euromoney recently sat down in Dubai with the heads of investment banking for HSBC in the Middle East. The conversation focused on the burgeoning trade and deal flow between the Gulf region and Asia, what investors on both sides are looking for and why they like what they see.
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The South Korean automaker is on track to raise upward of $3 billion via the listing of its India unit in Mumbai. If successful, it will surely compel more global firms to raise capital in south Asia’s largest market.
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MBridge, China’s cross-border digital currency initiative, has entered the minimum viable product stage. It is the world’s most advanced cross-border CBDC and stands on the cusp of playing a pivotal role in the de-dollarization process.
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The recent resurgence in M&A activity has driven interest in deal-contingent hedging as firms look for a buffer against unfavourable FX or interest-rate movements.
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It is getting tougher for investors to execute block trades of more than €2 million in Europe’s fragmented equity markets. Matching buyers and sellers needs a return to negotiation and away from pure electronic trading.
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The absence of staking and the earlier approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have sucked much of the excitement out of the SEC’s surprising decision to greenlight spot Ethereum ETFs.
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Hefty convertible bond sales by the likes of Chinese firms Lenovo and Alibaba, plus renewed interest in issuance from corporate Japan, have the market chattering. Is the market here to stay in Asia, or could a single soggy offering cause it to slam shut again?
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Does the high number of drawn-out insolvency cases in the UK suggest a failure of regulation?
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John Mathews, head of UHNW Americas for UBS in New York, tells Euromoney why the US’s private banking model is so successful, why the Swiss firm is really in the life counselling business, and explains why it has targeted US ultra-high net worth clients.
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As securities markets shift to T+1, repo is already going intraday with DLR the first of what may be many digital trading platforms to offer JPM Coin for the cash leg.
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By starting from a blank sheet of paper, Royal Bank of Canada hopes its new US cash-management platform will allow it to capture a greater share of wallet from existing clients while not being held back by legacy technology.
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Corporate treasurers are playing it safe when balancing the merits of exploiting improved access to capital against the risk of unexpected economic shocks and business interruption.
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Financial markets reacted calmly to news of an early UK election, expecting whoever wins to stick to the fiscal rules. But whoever wins must also cope with rising debts and onerous interest payments.
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The prospect of interest rate cuts from the Fed in 2024 is disappearing. Japan and Korea are among those feeling the heat.
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Will increased transparency in the European corporate bond market lead to higher transaction costs for large trades?
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The bank is looking to capitalise on its local presence in Latin America as Korean and Chinese firms intensify their nearshoring efforts.
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Unlike other firms in Latin America, BTG Pactual hides its growing retail digital banking business within its wealth-management division. Why?
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In an interview with Euromoney, European Banking Authority chair José Manuel Campa joins the European Central Bank and others in pressuring banks to do more to prepare for geopolitical risks spreading from Russia to China, the US and Middle East.
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Banks and regulators are keen to use instant payments to reduce the influence of Visa and Mastercard on the European payments industry – but replacing these two dominant players will be far from easy.
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Naz Vahid is to leave Citi after nearly four decades as one of the US bank’s most effective and innovative wealth managers.
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Blurring the lines in foreign exchange between automation, traditional AI and generative AI runs the risk of undermining trading services by setting unrealistic expectations.
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Chief financial officers and finance directors have much to gain from bundling treasury services if they can convince senior management that such offerings deliver value for money.
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As mandated real-time payments loom, Europe’s banks and other payment providers must look at modernising legacy infrastructure.
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Corporates’ longstanding complaint on banks’ payments offerings is that they don’t know what they are being charged for but suspect it is too much. Airwallex now provides an alternative at global scale.
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Restructuring HSBC, like painting the Forth bridge, is a never-ending job. While Noel Quinn has done well, the board must not make another ham-fisted transition.
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A lack of consensus on whether recent under-performance of Asian currencies will impact China’s willingness to let its own currency weaken is leading to disparate views on near-term valuations.
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The body responsible for settling about $6.5 trillion of global daily FX trades has decided against extending its deadlines to accommodate non-US participants who still want to use its next-day settlement service. But it expects the impact to be limited – far too limited to justify the complexity that a change would impose on its members.
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Digital negotiable instruments offer the prospect of improved working capital and better liquidity, but they face implementation challenges.
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Direct lenders to risky borrowers take comfort from their seniority in the creditor hierarchy. But stressed borrowers could jeopardise this as they struggle to attract new funding.
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Quarterly survey reveals that UK finance professionals may be feeling more upbeat about prospects, but that this is yet to translate into a willingness to take greater risk onto balance sheets.
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UK fintechs attracted more investment than all European rivals combined in a tough funding market last year, but a broken IPO market leaves them with nowhere to go.
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Previous changes of policy direction have left analysts undecided on whether to attribute recent sharp corrections to the renminbi reference rate to accident or design – or even a combination of the two.
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The EU’s Instant Payments Regulation may have fired the starting gun on real-time payments in Europe, but many banks remain stuck in the blocks.
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The Singapore lender is looking to India in search of new business and growth opportunities, its chief executive Piyush Gupta tells Euromoney. Long term, it aims to emulate onshore the country’s best private-sector lenders, HDFC and Kotak Mahindra.
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The Chinese financial hub just posted its worst first quarter for IPO proceeds in 15 years. With China’s economy stumbling and new local security laws deterring global investors, can anything stop the rot?
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As banks retreat to their home markets, they must find reliable partners to serve corporate customers overseas or risk losing them.
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The challenges around distributed ledger technology implementation and integration for bond issuance have proved more significant than early proponents had hoped.
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Despite overlapping in a number of key workflow areas, asset managers continue to face challenges with FX order management systems that struggle to emulate the capabilities of systems designed to manage execution.
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Market conditions have heightened concerns over the potential cost of failed securities settlement as the world’s largest financial market prepares to move to T+1.
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The paradox of Itaú is that it has maintained its leadership of Brazil’s banking sector with an ease and assuredness in recent years that belies the radical and continual transformation going on under the surface. The bank’s CFO, Alexsandro Broedel, tells Euromoney that its management’s only real constant is to view every new player as an existential threat – and react accordingly.
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While welcome, initiatives by the government and financial sector bodies designed to make it easier for companies to raise funds in the UK face a number of obstacles.
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As Japan puts an end to the global negative interest rate era, its central bank's QE programme remains in place and may be a model for peers. Investors maintain a bullish outlook on the stock market.
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Carry traders are going to have to work hard to maintain the momentum of the last few months if expectations of interest rate cuts in the US and hikes in Japan come to pass.
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Asset managers and industry regulators face operational challenges around the tokenization of private assets.
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Caution at local commercial banks – coupled with the eagerness of large investment banks to foster relationships with private equity players – means large real-estate deals fuelled by back leverage could be primed for a comeback in Europe.
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Corporates seeking to leverage sustainable investment opportunities continue to be restricted by the lack of reliable data on which to base their assessments.
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The UK startup is now a fully regulated bank and private funds are backing its vision to embed regulated banking in non-financial companies as well as fintechs.
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Many vendors believe corporate treasurers should be doing more to eliminate superfluous accounts, protect payment data and direct resources to improving paper-based processes.
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The UBS chief investment office’s sustainable and impact investing strategist wants to avoid measurement for the sake of measurement, but responding to client demand for more data while ensuring its readability remains a challenge.
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Chief executive Carlos Eduardo Guimarães says that he expects the bank’s return on equity to double to between 20% and 22% in the next two years.
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Banco Inter reported return on equity of 8.5% in the fourth quarter of 2023 but is now targeting a return on equity of 30% by 2028, CFO Santiago Stel tells Euromoney.
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Perception appears to be just as important as reality when it comes to buy-side firms viewing themselves as FX liquidity providers.
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Leading commercial banks are focusing on their approach to relationship management to reassure corporate customers that they are being listened to.
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In 2020, Deutsche Bank’s Asia chief, Alexander von zur Mühlen, placed more of his chips on fast-growing southeast Asia. As global firms diversify out of China, his prescience and willingness to deliver on his convictions is starting to pay off.
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Traditional custodians are maintaining their dominance in the face of growing fintech activity in the sector.
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Boosting the role of corporate treasury by enabling it to centralize group-wide FX management may sound appealing, but implementation and cost challenges should not be underestimated.
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Accommodating credit markets mean that corporates are keen to get fundraising completed ahead of elections on both sides of the Atlantic.
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He leaves the Australian financial firm after transforming its commodities and global markets division, and despite being widely tipped as likely to succeed current CEO Shemara Wikramanayake.
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Corporates continue to exhibit worrying levels of complacency when it comes to the implications of rate rises for their bottom line.
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Former bank examiner Alessandro DiNello stresses resiliency of deposits as NYCB strives to build capital after higher provisions and ratings downgrades.
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Citi’s head of Asia treasury and trade solutions has retired after 40 years at the US bank. He tells Euromoney what he would do if he were a 20-something graduate today, and why it helps to be both a specialist and a jack-of-all-trades in the industry now.
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Investors will be hoping that the fall in the value of Bitcoin since US regulators approved the listing and trading of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products is not a sign of things to come.
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Internal and external reforms are under way as the new president signals a break with the previous administration.
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Trade-receivables securitization transactions are flourishing as corporates seek more affordable access to long-term financing.
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Uneven progress towards financial market reform across the continent continues to pose a challenge for ambitious African corporates.
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While the world’s biggest markets are still preparing for T+1 settlement, talk is growing of the next step – but going any faster would mean a total reworking of how markets function.
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The Sino-Swiss corridor, set up to encourage Chinese firms to sell global depositary receipts to international investors in the European state, took off fast in 2022. But a host of challenges, from Chinese regulatory concerns to an apparent lack of global interest, has stalled its progress.
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Corporates are adopting a variety of approaches to mitigate the impact of uncertainty in foreign exchange markets caused by divergence in economic policy and performance.
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The London Stock Exchange Group’s head of sustainable finance strategic initiatives wants climate data to redefine the act of indexing.
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Implementing real-time payments can have consequences for corporates who underestimate the impact of cash leaving their business more quickly. Even as solutions become cheaper to implement, corporates are being cautious.
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Ambitious brokerage firms have precipitated a shift in demand for FX licences, with interest in regulated European and Asian markets on the increase at the expense of offshore jurisdictions.
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Proposed regulatory changes will not dull treasurers’ appetite for money-market funds, even if interest rates are cut more aggressively than expected.
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Many companies still ignore the contribution that properly resourced treasury teams make to corporate performance.
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Is the CME’s new spot FX marketplace further evidence of the trend towards futures and options trading, and away from private deals?
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Elevated inflation and interest rates have focused treasury attention on the importance of diversification, particularly for those with an environmental, social or governance focus.
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A team of once-public sector bankers and officials is launching a new private equity fund that aims to identify ‘climate winners’ from the transition to a decarbonized economy. It has identified key industries but its central thesis is regulation.
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Outgoing supervisory chair Andrea Enria warns against ‘complacency’ – despite higher capital ratios at eurozone banks – as he announces new requirements on banks to tackle investment-banking leverage, liquidity shortages and leveraged finance risks.
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Strategic adjustments, such as those resulting from mergers or acquisitions, represent a valuable opportunity for corporates to enhance their payment infrastructure.
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Siemens is anchor client for a new rules-based approach to banking.
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The chief executive of Newton Investment Management is a forthright believer in the power of active investors to effect change at the companies they invest in, and thinks tinkering with market rules is unlikely to boost the appeal of London-listed equities.
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Many corporates are realising the benefits of intercompany netting on FX risk, trading and cash-flow visibility.
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Spoiled for choice, FX brokers have become more strategic – and selective – when it comes to choosing liquidity providers.
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The commodities firm still needs large banking groups and a range of options when it comes to supporting its operations.
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More and more bond trading is automated. As volatility now shifts from rates to credit that will provide a stern examination of new trade execution tools.
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While many African countries experienced lower interbank FX turnover and saw their foreign-exchange reserves dwindle last year, there are grounds for optimism that 2023 will turn out to be a better year at both regional and national level.
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The sovereign pushed hard on its first use-of-proceeds green bond, but a sustainability-linked bond was not seen as a practical option for now.
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The use of AI for ESG reporting and assessments is spreading, and regulators can’t keep up. Lenders need to factor in a new set of governance risks that are hard to identify.
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Markets jump on the news that Javier Milei will be Argentina’s next president. A large devaluation is needed, but that leads to the risk of deposit flight.
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The overall use of cash will continue to fall, but the decline of bank branch networks means that businesses now face a headache in handling physical takings.
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While the air at the Singapore Fintech Festival was full of grand ideas about GenAI, real innovation was taking place in the weeds of fintech development.
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Sector shows strong profit performance in the third quarter as asset quality improves.
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As Citi presses on with its consumer-banking exits around the world, the job of defining what its international network now represents falls to its newly appointed head of international, Ernesto Torres Cantú.
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Andy Sieg is back again from Merrill Lynch, and has big plans for Citi’s new global wealth franchise.
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Exiting consumer banking in a range of markets around the world was one of Jane Fraser's first steps when she became Citi’s chief executive. The immensely complex task would need the safest of hands.
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Big banks are scrutinized on environmental, social and governance matters today as never before and they must often walk a tightrope between competing interests. Citi is no exception.
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Competition for deposits is influencing pricing decisions on commercial loans. However, the major cash-management banks insist that they have maintained both deposit levels and lending rates.
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Corporates are taking a big punt on markets remaining relatively benign, given their apparent lack of confidence in existing FX technology and systems.
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The AFX marketplace provides a new venue for US regional and community banks to lend and borrow from each other overnight. It could be the foundation for a new credit-sensitive benchmark rate.
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Private banking clients have begun exploring alternative asset allocation strategies in Brazil. Euromoney talks to the founders of a startup that is tapping into this demand with a strategy focused on special situations.
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Transaction banks must help their corporate clients to make the best use of new technologies, but without burdening them with unsustainable IT spending commitments.
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The big custody banks are pursuing a variety of digital-asset custody strategies to encourage wider market participation from institutional clients.
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Banks say they are working hard to maintain an edge in an increasingly crowded and fragmented cross-border retail payments market.
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A wealth manager, who came into a legendary but unstable global investment bank and transformed it, hands on a very different and much better firm.
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Global financial regulators are right to pay more attention to non-bank risks, John Schindler, secretary general of the Financial Stability Board tells Euromoney. But is there a danger of losing sight of the most important piece of the system to preserve: the banks?
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The inability of trade-finance participants to fully leverage the value of the data generated by transactions remains a source of frustration, particularly for small businesses.
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Banks may be retreating from lending directly to small and medium-sized enterprises, but by lending to credit specialists with good technology they can still be a source of funding for the sector.
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Sustainability-linked loans have faced growing criticism for their opacity and concerns around greenwashing. Sustainability-linked loan bonds could help to bring more transparency to the market and help legitimise these structures.
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The controversy surrounding My Forex Funds has reinforced the view that tighter regulation of foreign-exchange proprietary trading firms is inevitable.
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Widespread use of ISO 20022 could have a far-reaching impact on supply-chain finance by facilitating faster processing of transactions.
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It took five years for the invoice finance specialist Accelerated Payments to advance its first €1 billion, but just nine months for the next €500 million.
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Digital banks look to online games to help drive retention.
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Bidding $2.5 billion for the bulk of Credit Suisse’s sub-Saharan Africa ultra-high net-worth private bank book 18 months ago has been a ‘game changer’ for Barclays in the region, the UK bank’s Africa market head Amol Prabhu tells Euromoney.
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Deutsche Bank’s Mexico team says the country is vital for Latin American credibility and that nearshoring will drive FDI in the coming decade.
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Transaction banks are collaborating with ERP system vendors and other fintechs to maximise corporate use cases for ISO 20022.
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Patricio Sepúlveda, head of Chile’s public debt office, discusses how programmatic issuance demonstrates commitment to sustainability-linked bond goals and can make these structures more cost effective.