Western Europe

As Spain prepares to digest the €17 billion merger of CaixaBank and Bankia, Andalucían lender Unicaja has revived merger talks with rival Liberbank as it faces a threat to its regional dominance. While its community roots are an advantage, it also needs an answer to the calls for change

UK regulatory proposals could mean tougher times ahead for mortgage customers, but challenger banks could get a little more competitive.

No golf please, I’m delivering: how the German bank’s new CEO sees himself.

Manfred Knof starts early next year, after Martin Zielke is ousted by Cerberus. He joins recently arrived chairman Hans-Jörg Vetter.

The chairman of UBS seems determined to force a wave of European banking consolidation. A merger of his firm with Credit Suisse may not be possible, but other deals are likely.

Putting together Spain’s two biggest domestic lenders makes sense, because, while both have good management, one side is better skilled at cross-selling.

The banking-as-a-service provider enjoys a boost as older banks accelerate digital transformation. It also harbours ambitions to become a cross-border clearing bank.

As the second wave of the coronavirus hits, The Hut Group may win from new lockdowns after completing the biggest UK IPO in five years and largest ever for a tech company.

There’s no point attacking banks for filing suspicious activity reports as they are required to, but they must work better together with law enforcement to fight financial crime.

Different sovereign funds have approached Covid in different ways – drawdowns, contrarian investments, flights to safety and backstopping local raisings – but Ireland’s has perhaps been the most clearly defined.

Covid-19 may be the moment sovereign wealth funds were made for: a shocking disruption to national economies that calls for a stable, patiently invested buffer. Funds have reacted in different ways, but they’re all bigger, shrewder and hopefully smarter than they were during the GFC.

The ECB has been pushing consolidation in the hope that it will make European banks more efficient and sustainable, but it will require large-scale job losses in a weak economy.

The G20 has called for renewed efforts to enhance slow and costly international payments. The founder of Worldpay and ClearBank may have the answer.

The lifeline that Berlin promised Germany’s businesses earlier this year was so large it made other corporate rescues in Europe look tame. In its determination to protect companies and jobs Berlin is stirring new debate, at home and abroad, about its growing role as an industrial decision maker and even shareholder. Can the country use its financial muscle to relaunch its own sputtering economic model?

The EU recovery fund could deliver so much more than just a short-term boost to peripheral sovereign bonds and European equities.

Despite the fanfare around their announcement, many of the proposed benefits of the 'fintech bridges' or bilateral agreements the UK government has reached with regulators around the world have yet to be realized.

Investors beware – countries in the region have been downgraded in Euromoney’s country risk survey this year.

The EU’s new recovery fund is a historic step to help the countries worst affected by Covid avoid a debt trap. If the EU’s short-term bills become a risk-free, interest-rate instrument, this temporary response to the deadly virus could become a permanent change to Europe’s capital markets

Exits at ABN Amro, including its big operation in commodity trade finance, raise questions about ING, as both firms enjoy much better returns in Dutch retail lending.

UniCredit CEO Jean Pierre Mustier is among bankers pushing for easier corporate access to government equity, as state-backed loans have heightened firms’ indebtedness, and firms’ sales struggle to recover.

With staff working from home and use of digital signatures not yet ubiquitous, banks need to step up security measures to prevent opportunistic criminals profiting from the disruption caused by coronavirus.

State-guaranteed lending to help hard-hit firms in Germany has lagged its equivalents in France, Spain, Italy and the UK. State development bank KfW says that’s a good thing.

Analysts expect the European recovery fund to underpin a strengthening of the single currency against the dollar over the rest of this year and beyond.

The coronavirus recession makes the need for bank consolidation in Europe even more pressing. But neither a more accommodative stance on M&A at the ECB nor the EU’s new recovery fund will be enough to make it happen.

With approval from Brussels, Germany can roll out Mittelstand recapitalizations through a new €600 billion Wirtschaftsstabilisierungsfonds, or WSF – just in time for the country’s troubled but economically vital automotive sector.

Institutions don’t have to believe in any investment case for cryptocurrencies to garner returns from volatility in a growing, active, inefficient market.

Attorney Mel Georgie Racela runs the Anti-Money Laundering Council Secretariat in the Philippines, one of two agencies tasked with getting to the bottom with the country’s involvement in the Wirecard scandal. He talks to Chris Wright.

Customers are starting to embrace digital forwarders that provide supply chain finance services as well as digitized freight forwarding.

The country’s response to the scandal is a chance to show good governance.

Everyone wanted radical change at Commerzbank, except the bank itself.