Search results for

When a man is down, bankers rarely hesitate to stick in the knife. So the moment Bill Loomis was sacked as Lazard's chief executive by Michel David-Weill out came the stilettos.

Leonard Licht and Mercury Asset Management retained an aura of invincibility in the 1980s and '90s. Even after Merrill Lynch bought Mercury, Licht's approach to UK fund management lingers.

Monitoring thousands of accounts payable and receivable flowing daily through myriad bank accounts, while minimizing short-term borrowing costs and maximizing returns on investment of liquidity, is a huge challenge for corporate treasurers. They value highly banks that do this well. But Euromoney's poll shows few banks excel.

The success of Chase’s past merger ventures seemed to bode well for its link-up with JP Morgan. But those deals of the early 1990s had brought together commercial banks and didn’t have to reckon with integrating culturally alien investment bankers. On the execution front, the merger has proved messy, with blood-letting among JP Morganites in New York being matched by Chase losses in Europe. Beyond this – in itself enough to worry shareholders – there are concerns that underperforming JP Morgan was not the ideal medium for Chase’s equity market aspirations and that the deal was ill-timed, damaging Chase’s well-deserved reputation for clever risk-management skills in choppy markets.

Within days of the EC unveiling proposed conditions on the merger of SEB and Swedbank, the banks called the marriage off. Had Brussels scuppered a sound deal, or were the fainthearted suitors getting cold feet anyway? The row hinges on the commission’s curious focus on the dominance the new combine would have boasted in its modest domestic market, not the European market as a whole. Critics argue this discriminates against smaller EU states and will curtail cross-border bank mergers.

Akbank, emerging on top of Turkey's banking crisis, has embarked on a plan to professionalize its management. As it outgrows its family origins, Atbank prepares itself for a joint venture.

The need for timely and accurate corporate reporting is a universal concern, but there is no globally consistent evaluation of the levels of disclosure. Recognizing this gap, Standard & Poor’s has conducted a survey of 1,600 companies worldwide to complement its corporate governance scores. In this first release, over 350 liquid and large Latin American and Asian companies taken from the Standard & Poor’s/IFCI Index are analyzed

Axion4gstp, established in March 2000 to develop the global straight-through processing initiative, is now in its pilot testing phase.

Vodafone announces its plans to take control of Japan Telecom, Japan's third-largest telecom operator.

Normally in the aftermath of disasters it is not long before jokes start doing the rounds.

UK proposals on the reform of insolvency procedures take account of the special needs of securitizations. There is, though, uncertainty that all types of such deals are covered.

The Caspian region has begun to boom because of its oil potential. Now the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the US will transform the politics of the region. Bad news for the Afghans could in the long-run be good news for the countries around the Caspian if it gives them more bargaining power.