While incumbent Italian banks have seen profits surge thanks to higher rates, the shrinking size and profitability of the non-performing loan market has hit illimity hard. Unperturbed, founder and chief executive Corrado Passera believes the original premise for an SME-focused neobank is more valid than ever.

After years of retrenchment, Commerzbank’s head of corporate clients Michael Kotzbauer tells Euromoney of a tentative return to growth. The bank has dodged Germany’s commercial real estate slump but is having to adapt to a worsening geopolitical backdrop. Capital and cost efficiency remain big priorities.

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.

Encumbered by an impotent fiscal policy and a sluggish stock market, bank lending could be China’s only route to economic recovery.

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.

A private debt hangover in real estate is threatening middle-class retirement savings across Germany. Local banks, which focused more on senior loans, should be safer. But are these lenders ready to finance the recovery in commercial property that the German market so badly needs?

Former bank examiner Alessandro DiNello stresses resiliency of deposits as NYCB strives to build capital after higher provisions and ratings downgrades.

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.

With its economy embattled and investors fleeing in droves, getting good data on China has never been more important. There are some great analysts and research shops out there. But too many China-facing reports suffer from a lack of imagination, groupthink brought on by a fear of irritating Beijing and an over-reliance on state data. That must change.

At the start of 2023, analysts sized China and liked what they saw: an economy reopening after three years of Covid isolation, and ready once again to roar. Nothing of the sort has happened and corporates and institutional investors are now fleeing the market in droves.

The Signa Group of companies is complex, but its problems are simple: debt service costs are going up while property values are going down.

As the Chinese property crisis deepens, a new round of bank-led rescue efforts is on the horizon. While banks must shoulder part of the blame for the crisis, their options for action are limited.

Real estate has been particularly exposed to the slowdown in bank lending. Nevertheless, logistics remains a bright spot as retail sites continue to adapt and office oversupply persists.

China is having a shocker of a year. Growth has stalled, deflation is back and global firms are moving production elsewhere as they de-risk from China to boost supply-chain resiliency. FDI is down sharply and exports are sinking. Just as Brexit reshaped the UK’s relationship with the world, has Covid done the same for China?

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.

Banks are not waiting for loans to stop performing before they sell them.

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.

Australian banks adore residential mortgages. But they are ignoring a cohort of people who are going to run into a lot of trouble with repayments.

Commercial real-estate losses will not greatly damage big banks in Europe, but the banks themselves could inflict real damage to commercial real estate.

Higher interest rates will weigh heavily on the property development lending that makes up the bulk of OakNorth’s loan book. But chief executive and co-founder Rishi Khosla tells Euromoney the bank can maintain its ultra-low loan losses and keep growing.

As Europe’s economic mood sours, a sharp rise in interest rates is putting commercial real estate through its first big cyclical turn since 2008. The non-bank sector, which has become a vital enabler of funding at higher leverage, now faces a test of its resilience.

The gating of Blackstone’s $69 billion private real estate fund Breit highlights the risks in semi-liquid investment vehicles, even ones that perform strongly. Pitching US private market exposure to European and Asian retail investors may be slowed by the setback.

Beijing recently ordered its state banks, including ICBC and Bank of China, to plough $162 billion worth of fresh credit into the country’s troubled property sector. In doing so, they look not proactive but panicky. A negative hit on lenders’ profits is inevitable.

As the cost of debt nudges higher than potential yield, real estate investors are re-evaluating their exposure to the sector.

China’s property sector is in freefall and Covid lockdowns are throttling growth as bad loans pile up at the banks. As president Xi Jinping prepares for an unprecedented third term, a deluge of crises threatens to destroy the country's four-decade economic miracle.

With more than 220 million homes to renovate, banks must provide the necessary funding to avoid being left with non-compliant housing assets. But a lack of standardized data on energy performance certificates makes it difficult to justify lending to some homeowners.

Portion’s Jason Rosenstein explains why he paid $1.2 million for a plot of virtual land amid the goldrush of corporations launching their brands in the metaverse.

As more Chinese high-yield names default in the real-estate sector, one of the region’s leading distressed debt investors shares his views on the state of the market – and the investment opportunities that come with it.

Asian high yield has always been dominated by Chinese real estate, so the Evergrande crisis has shut down the market for new issuance. Is this the chance for non-Chinese issuers to step up?