The Brazilian government’s changes to the laws governing its tax-exempt debentures have allayed financial market fears that president Lula intends to rely on BNDES to fund billions spending on infrastructure, crowding out private-sector finance.

Leading commercial banks are focusing on their approach to relationship management to reassure corporate customers that they are being listened to.

Chinese fintech Ant Group has offered UBS a reported $250 million for Credit Suisse’s China joint venture, outbidding Citadel Securities. It is a timely reminder that despite its current malaise, Asia’s largest economy is still a great long-term place to invest.

There are sensible elements to CEO Slawomir Krupa’s plans for Societe Generale, but their communication needs attention.

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.

Investors and staff at Societe Generale are slowly starting to understand chief executive Slawomir Krupa’s brutally honest approach to the bank’s many challenges. Taking them with him as he embarks on his restructuring plan may prove a more delicate task.

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.

Diego De Giorgi’s arrival as Standard Chartered’s CFO coincides with a shift away from asset shrinkage and a “final push” on digital transformation.

Barclays chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan intends to stop a low-returning investment bank from dragging the rest of the group down with it. He argues that most of the improvements are within the bank’s own grasp. That is debatable, and in any case hardly reassuring.

The UK government’s impending sale to retail investors of a big stake in the bank informs the shadow-play guidance on this year’s earnings.

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.

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.

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.

The hard graft of integrating Credit Suisse still lies ahead, leaving UBS as a concept stock and hopeful investors looking through the efforts of the next three years.

No industry will be more overwhelmingly affected by new forms of artificial intelligence – both generative-AI and other technology to come – than banking. Costly but cost-effective, it is up to banks to make AI work for them, not the other way around.

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.

Internal and external reforms are under way as the new president signals a break with the previous administration.

Extracting value from Russia via a stake in Strabag previously owned by Oleg Deripaska shouldn’t be confused with a proper disentanglement from Russia by Raiffeisen. The main impetus for the transaction may, in fact, lie with Deripaska and Strabag’s other shareholders.

Management changes expand the responsibilities of Marianne Lake and Jennifer Piepszak, lead candidates to one day head JPMorgan, but there is another contender.

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.

Corporate and development banks want their capital to reach the smallest and most impactful of SMEs in frontier markets. Traditional credit ratings and risk assessments can get in the way.

Record regional bank profits, plus strong capital ratios in Western Europe, have fuelled hope for more bank acquisitions in Central and Eastern Europe. The uncertain effect of recent court rulings on Swiss franc mortgages, however, is a big obstacle to deals in Poland.

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.

Some banks like the idea of external venture capitalists leading their venture businesses, but banker-led units are more likely to cement their inherent advantage.

It has become fashionable to describe private credit as an opaque and fast inflating bubble that could bring crisis to the global financial system. But in Asia even banks and regulators hope it will grow to bridge the yawning financing gap.

Collaboration between national banks has seen widespread adoption of mobile payments schemes. The French and German-led approach of focusing on a single European scheme could therefore be seen as a distraction. But is it the only real way of keeping US payment companies at bay?

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.

The World Bank is issuing ‘outcomes’ bond structures for niche sustainability themes and with new financing mechanisms. Like blue bonds, they are probably going to need some rule-setting.

Siemens is anchor client for a new rules-based approach to banking.