North America
LATEST ARTICLES
-
S&P’s regional bank index has just pushed past its March 10, 2023, level, reflecting where these stocks were immediately before the collapse of SVB last year. Those stocks are rising sharply and investors are seeing huge profits, so is this a sign that regional banks have finally emerged from their crisis?
-
Tyler Dickson’s departure from Citi must rank as one of the most predictable moves in investment banking this year, even if where he has ended up is perhaps less obvious. Elsewhere, Citadel Securities is apparently set to make an offer that some of the Street might find difficult to refuse.
-
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.
-
Donald Trump is now likely to win the US presidential election after a disastrous debate performance by incumbent Joe Biden. Trump 2.0 may bring complications as well as benefits for Wall Street.
-
Derivatives structurers are thriving, but regulators aren’t convinced the biggest Wall Street banks have a firm grasp of their complex exposure.
-
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.
-
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.
-
For the US to come out in support of voluntary carbon markets even while arguing for their reform is an important step in the drive to seek better standards for what are vital – albeit flawed – mechanisms. But more guidelines on how to certify and trade offsets are no substitute for the real thing.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The prospect of interest rate cuts from the Fed in 2024 is disappearing. Japan and Korea are among those feeling the heat.
-
Anything except a brief stay on as chairman would cast a baleful shadow over the chief executive’s successor at JPMorgan.
-
Naz Vahid is to leave Citi after nearly four decades as one of the US bank’s most effective and innovative wealth managers.
-
UOB’s acquisition of Citi’s consumer assets in four southeast Asia markets strengthens its status in one of the world’s fastest growing regions. The Singapore lender’s CEO Wee Ee Cheong talks to Euromoney about why this matters and what comes next.
-
Exactly one year ago, San Francisco-based First Republic Bank was sold by regulators amid a US regional banking crisis. Citizens Financial Group, which had seen the sale as a chance to turbocharge its private banking ambitions, lost out to JPMorgan. But far from being the end of the story, that failed bid was just the beginning. Within weeks the bank had announced First Republic’s Susan deTray as the head of its new private bank, a unit that is now at the heart of a fast-growing wealth franchise.
-
Recently rebranded and expanded, Wealth at Work is Citi’s most dynamic generator of wealth revenues. Its leader, Naz Vahid, sits down in New York with Euromoney to explain her vision for its future.
-
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.
-
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.
-
A private credit market growing so fast, away from the oversight of bank regulators, may be a new source of systemic risk. With smaller investors taking greater exposure to an asset class whose high returns and low losses look almost too good to be true, there could be trouble ahead.
-
Junior bankers should relax about the threat to their jobs from AI and lean into opportunities to bluff their way to Wall Street glory.
-
A move back up in rates is creating a PR battle among Wall Street banks. JPMorgan was punished for a cautious outlook, Goldman Sachs promoted strong fixed income trading results and Bank of America projected a Zen approach to rate moves.
-
There almost certainly won’t be a Truss/Kwarteng-style meltdown in the US Treasury market – just persistent inflation, high rates, volatility and likely some form of monetary financing.
-
The decision by the US SEC to drop mandatory Scope 3 reporting weakens global emissions reporting standards. However, many corporate issuers are already using Scope 3 performance targets on sustainability-linked transactions for non-regulatory reasons. Are the debt and equities markets leading companies onto ESG ground upon which regulators fear to tread?
-
Asset managers and industry regulators face operational challenges around the tokenization of private assets.
-
The Basel committee is shocked – shocked! – that some banks might be reporting inflated leverage ratios.
-
The Fed chair has made a remarkable, virtually unconditional surrender to opponents of his plan for Basel III implementation in the US. The tactical withdrawal is embarrassing, but it makes strategic sense.
-
Luring star bankers from rivals – like Citi’s appointment of JPMorgan veteran Viswas Raghavan – can bring hidden costs beyond the expense of replacing stock options for the lucky new hire.
-
Leading commercial banks are focusing on their approach to relationship management to reassure corporate customers that they are being listened to.
-
Chief executive Jane Fraser has been true to her promise of a marquee hire to run Citi’s banking division, with the appointment today of JPMorgan veteran Viswas Raghavan. He brings a wealth of both transactional and operational management experience, but the symbolism of his arrival may be just as important.
-
Even after the rally on its latest restructuring plan, investors still value the UK bank at such a wide discount to book that management must consider radical action.
-
Direct lenders commanded generous terms on leveraged buyout financing last year, but volumes were low and, now that they show signs of revival, the banks are competing once more.
-
One of the first edicts handed down by Citi’s wealth head is to tell all private bankers to track and record client calls. It has ruffled feathers at the US lender, but if it transforms the unit into the powerhouse CEO Jane Fraser wants it to be, then so be it.
-
Corporates continue to exhibit worrying levels of complacency when it comes to the implications of rate rises for their bottom line.
-
Former bank examiner Alessandro DiNello stresses resiliency of deposits as NYCB strives to build capital after higher provisions and ratings downgrades.
-
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.
-
After a dire couple of years, the hope had been that the only way was up for US regional bank M&A. But this week’s trauma at New York Community Bank has demonstrated some of the problems that can catch out the unwary as expansion takes them into new regulatory territory.
-
Losses on commercial real-estate loans at US regional banks should surprise no one; risk at the heart of the US financial system thanks to weak regulation should shock us all.
-
Trade-receivables securitization transactions are flourishing as corporates seek more affordable access to long-term financing.
-
Management changes expand the responsibilities of Marianne Lake and Jennifer Piepszak, lead candidates to one day head JPMorgan, but there is another contender.
-
The SEC wants us to be thinking about special purpose acquisition companies again.
-
Wall Street bankers tempted to pick a fight with the Federal Reserve should take a lesson from the insider trading plea deal by investor Joe Lewis.
-
Opposition to the proposed Basel III endgame for US banks is now so widespread that a climb down by the Federal Reserve is likely. Wall Street bankers like Jamie Dimon can stop crying wolf about increased capital requirements and think carefully about publicly threatening their regulators.
-
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.
-
It is not hard to find short-term worries over global markets’ state of readiness for the US’s transition to one-day settlement in late May. But even if the UK, Europe and those Asian markets still using two-day settlement can adapt to the shift in the longer term, they will also face intense pressure to lessen their dislocation from the US cycle by copying its move. Many also fear the ultimate end-game of same-day or even instant settlement.
-
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.
-
They already dominate the investment banking business in Europe, and now the leading US banks have their eyes on an even bigger prize. They see their vast investments in the digital technology transforming payments and transaction services and their retained global presences as the keys to winning even greater revenues from Europe’s midsize corporates.
-
Regulators are making more mileage out of their settlement with Morgan Stanley than the outcome really deserves.
-
Morgan Stanley has for years touted its expertise and adherence to confidentiality as reasons to choose it over rivals for equity block trades. But charges brought by regulators over leakages of confidential information by the bank’s former head of US equity syndicate and another employee now make its historic claims look embarrassing.
-
Outside Switzerland, European banks largely escaped the banking turmoil last March. That hasn’t prevented supervisors using it as an excuse to ratchet up the pressure. Ahead of its 10th anniversary as a supervisor, is the ECB – as some bankers suggest – getting too intrusive?
-
Siemens is anchor client for a new rules-based approach to banking.
-
The annual Senate quizzing of US big bank chief executives threw up all the usual favourite partisan arguments, but little else. If this is oversight, it often lacks insight.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Instead of boasting about the billions extracted from the crypto exchange, the US Departments of Justice and Treasury should have closed it down.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
-
Andy Sieg is back again from Merrill Lynch, and has big plans for Citi’s new global wealth franchise.
-
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.
-
-
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.
-
Continuity is likely to be the theme as incoming leader inherits a well-performing franchise, but competition in wealth management and the markets businesses, as well as a still-lacklustre environment for investment banking, will be among Pick’s challenges.
-
The controversy surrounding My Forex Funds has reinforced the view that tighter regulation of foreign-exchange proprietary trading firms is inevitable.
-
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.
-
More banks have announced partnerships with asset managers to place loans into private debt funds that offer investors better risk-adjusted returns than bank equity.
-
Private foundations were once the preserve of a narrow group of the monied elite. Today, they are the fastest-growing source of private-sector philanthropy in the US and across the developed world.
-
BlackRock joins Allfunds initiative to distribute new variants of private equity and credit funds to wealthy individuals.
-
A Citi survey of family offices finds some unsurprising things to say about the worries of the wealthy – inflation, interest rates and geopolitics – but discovers a shocking lack of preparation for succession planning.
-
The enormous re-listing of Arm Holdings is unrepresentative in many ways, but it still contains a valuable lesson for those coming down the pipe.
-
Borrowers that financed cheaply in 2021 will soon hit a maturity wall. Many will struggle to refinance at higher cost. Some will default. Private credit managers – still magnets for institutional capital – are set to step in and bridge some of the financing gap left by the banks.
-
Beneath the Great Game geopolitics of US-Vietnam relations, there are some intriguing possibilities in the detail.
-
Should we take Vivek Ramaswamy literally or seriously?
-
Financial market practitioners might be forgiven for reflecting on a job well done now that the final Libor panel has ended its submissions. The journey has been immense, but the focus is turning to loose ends, including the argument that just won’t go away: is there a place for credit-sensitive rates in a post-Libor world?
-
As other investment banks cut staff, HSBC has been hiring to build a leading bank in tech and healthcare.
-
Banks and investors opposed to European Union derivatives clearing plans have made an astonishing charge: the EU is worse than the US in jealously guarding its own markets.
-
A tactical retreat on crypto regulation might help SEC chair Gary Gensler to avoid being bogged down in a war of attrition for the rest of his term.
-
With a new proposal for long-term debt issuance, US banking regulators have launched the next phase of their war against the lack of confidence that shook the industry in March 2023. But it is becoming increasingly clear that the approach is less about precision strikes and more about a carpet-bombing campaign.
-
The manner of the campaign against chief executive David Solomon risks causing the lasting damage that his internal opponents presumably wish to avoid.
-
The second-quarter earnings season saw more detail from US banks on how they are preparing for the worst in commercial real estate exposures. We look at how the data shapes up for the super-regional sector.
-
Moody’s took a swing at US banks last night. The moves might have seemed indiscriminate, but it’s hard to argue with the conclusions. After the scares of March, the sector is far from out of the woods.
-
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.
-
Banks including NatWest and JPMorgan are struggling to put out reputational risk-management fires.
-
Analysts are looking beyond China for clues as to where the main Asian currencies will go over the remainder of 2023 as they try to second-guess Japan’s monetary policy plans.
-
All private banks are different: in how they project their brand, build business, serve clients and generate fees. But they all seem to have two things in common. They love lending to rich people with big art collections and chatting about ocean preservation.
-
Jamie Dimon puts a limit on staff travel to one of JPMorgan’s more exotic branches.
-
The two chief executives should be on the undercard for the Musk/Zuckerberg cage fight.
-
-
Banks are not waiting for loans to stop performing before they sell them.
-
Rising default rates will soon separate the smart private credit managers from the mediocre. This offers opportunity for the winners to scale up.
-
Veteran banker Tom Montag is to join the board of Goldman Sachs in a bid to bolster support for embattled chief executive David Solomon. Weak second quarter earnings could make this task harder.
-
Extreme FX volatility is proving a challenge for some finance directors who are struggling to minimize the impact on their bottom line.
-
The standardized approach for counterparty credit risk has not yet proved to be the catalyst for greater use of clearing in the FX market that some expected.
-
Could trading of US sovereign credit default swaps trigger a global systemic meltdown? Probably not, but default swap shenanigans aren’t helping to calm jittery markets.
-
Inflation is not beaten and rates may rise further. But high-grade bonds can still provide steady income and low risk, playing a new old role in investor portfolios.
-
-
Leading firms join a new network of networks, but crypto natives see just another walled garden.
-
Banks keep up on the record commentary on the rules.
-
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 drumbeat of bad news from the US regional banks grows steadily louder, Euromoney talks to market veterans about the lessons that can be learned from the event that started it all: Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse in March.
-
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?
-
The big transaction banks are becoming increasingly active in the B2B marketplace as they seek to cash in on corporate digital transformation.
-
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.
-
JPMorgan has cleaned up in a deal that sees the regulators waive their own cap on 10% deposit ownership.
-
JPMorgan’s AI model to interpret central bank messaging came out just as it emerged that Jerome Powell had been pranked into discussing policy with Russian provocateurs. Euromoney’s distinctly obvious heuristics model (D’Oh!) might be needed.
-
Relative winners after a year of interest rate hikes include Bank of America and Citigroup. Losers are led by regional US banks, while alternative asset managers argue that higher rates present a historic opportunity.
-
How on earth, in this environment, did the bank deliver one of its best-ever quarters in Asia?
-
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.
-
Disagreement over where US interest rates are going has split opinion on overall prospects for emerging market currencies.
-
Rethinking liquidity regulation would be better than a regulatory backlash that imposes an even greater liquidity burden on banks. History offers some lessons on how that might be done.
-
The last broker-dealer was always going to feel the pain of a continuing capital markets slowdown, but sales and trading has provided a useful fillip.
-
Rising interest rates have driven demand for more efficient liquidity structures.
-
Citi’s Wealth at Work, which delivers wealth services to white-collar professionals in sectors from law and asset management to private equity, is less than two years old. Its founder and global head Naz Vahid talks to Euromoney about the concept and where the division can go from here.
-
The failure of venture capital’s favourite bank is bad news for a sector reliant on new injections of cheap capital to sustain loss-making growth.
-
As well as higher capital requirements for regional US banks, the policy response to the Silicon Valley Bank collapse will likely include increasing the Deposit Insurance Fund, which bigger banks will have to pay for.
-
Recent events call into question most of the core assumptions behind the rules designed to keep banks safe through a liquidity squeeze.
-
Bankers have been at pains to stress how different the world is today from the dark days of 2008: higher capital; more liquidity; lower credit risk and all that. But while individual banks may be safer than they were, collectively they arguably now face a worse existential crisis. Societies face awkward questions about how they value the utility of the banking sector – and how they should pay for it.
-
Big foreign-exchange banks are focussing on enhanced functionality to promote greater use of single-dealer platforms.