Naz Vahid is to leave Citi after nearly four decades as one of the US bank’s most effective and innovative wealth managers.

Some takeovers take time.

New accounts targeted at low-income customers reflects the reality of intense competition in the sector.

UK banks, asset managers and individuals see better returns from dumping UK stocks and investing elsewhere, but the impact eventually becomes ruinous.

The UK government wants to invigorate the UK stock market and sell its stake in NatWest. The bank’s private banking arm wants to boost its investment almost anywhere else.

BBVA’s bid for Banco Sabadell didn’t appear to be going well when its share price slumped after the announcement. Then Sabadell rejected the offer despite the substantial premium to its own share price.

Twenty-five years ago in Spain, ING launched a branchless bank – still its biggest greenfield retail operation. Euromoney asks Iberia chief executive Ignacio Juliá Vilar what still makes it stand out from both incumbents and newer arrivals.

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.

SocGen has trader trouble again.

BBVA could have bought Banco Sabadell much more cheaply in 2020. Sabadell’s CEO César González-Bueno has since turned his bank around. But BBVA’s return to the negotiating table comes at a time when European banking may be moving to a new and more confident phase.

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.

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.

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.

As banks focus more on climate adaptation across their businesses, are they conceding that mitigation efforts are futile?

The two European banks are both trying to de-emphasise their investment banks and want to build up areas where they see weakness. Barclays is later to this party than Deutsche, but both will have found encouragement in the first three months of 2024.

The Brazilian neobank is growing its number of clients faster than perhaps any financial institution on earth. Combine this with static unit costs and the operational leverage potential is big. CFO Guilherme Lago explains how its business model is now focused on the next five to 10 years as open banking generates unprecedented price transparency, customer portability and opportunity.

Junior bankers should relax about the threat to their jobs from AI and lean into opportunities to bluff their way to Wall Street glory.

Intesa Sanpaolo’s Isybank is the latest in-house neobank to run into trouble. But the desire to migrate core-banking systems onto the cloud is still encouraging other banks to follow this strategy.

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.

China’s Project Whitelist, launched at the start of the year, exists to ensure bank funding for property development. But it is there to protect projects, not the developers behind them.

Rumours that FAB is in exploratory talks with a Turkish lender, together with hopes for a big-ticket IPO, point to optimism despite the dire outlook on inflation.

Morgan Stanley’s wealth business went from 2.5 million client relationships to 18 million over the course of a couple of years. Now, a quartet of steely US regulators is looking at how the division manages potentially risky clients. Given its rapid pace of growth, this is perhaps less of a surprise than it initially appears.

Does Banco Galicia’s acquisition of HSBC Argentina validate president Javier Milei or weaken him?

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.

As banks retreat to their home markets, they must find reliable partners to serve corporate customers overseas or risk losing them.

Isbank’s chief executive Hakan Aran sees embedded finance and an innovative approach to bank branches as the future as the Turkish bank looks to rebuild on a better market environment for its 100-year anniversary.

The good news is that bank executives don’t see big loan losses ahead; the bad news is that they lack the confidence and vision to invest in the business.

After a decade of restructuring, EFG International ramped up hiring last year – above all from Credit Suisse. Chief executive Giorgio Pradelli talks about the firm’s scope to lead a wave of Swiss-bank consolidation, while doubling down on new wealth from the Middle East and Asia.

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.

Credit Suisse’s domestic bank was arguably the failed group’s best and strongest division. One year after the rescue, UBS is not the only one trying to feast on its domestic wealth-management and corporate-banking leftovers. Other Swiss and international players also hope to benefit from the longer-term fallout in Switzerland. Will the rush to pick up the remnants of the fallen champion pay off?