Search results for

Shocked by the sudden withdrawal of short-term dollar funding from US money-market funds 18 months ago, Société Générale has moved quickly to rein in businesses that depended on it, especially in the US and Asia, and to concentrate scarce resources on its European clients. It has also reoriented the financing business inside a corporate and investment bank that accounts for roughly one-third of the whole group’s allocated equity and a similar portion of its profits. Is that the right size to avoid undue pressure from regulators and investors?

Some of us have been there before, but all of us have derived a certain childish pleasure from people mistakenly pressing ‘reply all’ to an email, or sending one to everybody asking the most banal of questions. So spare a thought for the hapless Barclays employee who, we presume mistakenly, sent an email recently to the bank’s entire global address book and copied in Sir David Walker, the new chairman, asking about how to book a courier.

Tim Strong, a partner in the financial disputes team at international law firm Taylor Wessing, says new proposals from the Treasury at cracking down on Libor misconduct could be far-reaching for the banking sector - and will introduce tougher sanctions on the UK than the rest of Europe.

South Africa’s Standard Bank has been the most recent public victim of an informal rule that foreign-owned banks must operate onshore in Angola in partnership with a local institution: usually meaning Sonangol or the ruling family.

In Asia Pacific, Citi’s corporate and investment bank is starting to punch its weight as a broad restructuring, a shift in strategy and much soul-searching begin to bear fruit. Can it establish itself at the top of the investment banking pile?

It seems the UK is home to the worst snitches when it comes to reporting financial crimes.

Normally, cancellation of IPOs is a sign of market nervousness, but a record-breaking spate of pulled US deals this week hides far more positive signals

A focus on the key news and analysis surrounding the eurozone crisis

A pledge by Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, to do whatever it takes to ensure the survival of the eurozone, could face a test in 2013 as economic fundamentals are likely to worsen, says Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a former ECB board member.

"If you look at the behaviour of many banks even last year, they were in denial over the rising cost of funding. They were still doing loss-making loans in the hope of generating a return by cross-selling other services"

"I see UBS is targeting a 15% return on equity. I’m not sure that’s so ambitious: 15% of fuck all surely can’t be that hard"

UK-based hedge fund Stratton Street sees value in buying US dollar bonds from Asian countries with high net finances to GDP, using an NDF to add renminbi exposure, the firm tells Asiamoney, a sister publication of EuromoneyFXNews