Improving risk trends make Egypt and Romania solid bets for 2020
As another year – indeed, another decade – draws to a close, global investors are naturally preoccupied by trade frictions and geopolitics to the extent that longer-term trends and differentiated risk dynamics seem to go ignored. Indeed, despite these issues,...
Blockchain takes back seat in drive to digitize Asian trade finance
CamelOne is a multi-bank portal designed to support trade finance applications from companies for all participating banks. But unlike other trade finance platforms such as we.trade and Komgo, CamelOne is not built on blockchain – perhaps surprising, given Euromoney reported...
ETF portfolio trades could be the answer to the credit market’s liquidity concerns
Bank of America published its latest credit investor survey on December 18, which showed that the biggest risk investors are braced for in 2020 is market liquidity: only the second time ever that this factor has been uppermost in investors’...
IMF deal a boost for Ethiopia’s economic liberalization
Ethiopia’s sprawling capital Addis Ababa Ethiopia’s efforts to open its economy were bolstered in mid-December when the International Monetary Fund agreed a new lending programme which, coupled with the launch of the Addis Ababa stock market in 2020, will encourage...
Don’t bet on bank deregulation yet
A hearing at the European Parliament in mid-December caused much end of year excitement in bank capital circles. Chair of the Single Supervisory Mechanism, Andrea Enria, said that greater use of subordinated debt could serve to offset the impact on...
Swift KYC registry opens to corporates
Swift opened its KYC registry to corporate groups on Monday, allowing them to manage and share KYC data with banking partners across the world. The initiative follows other similar products launched by KYC.com, Refinitiv and Bloomberg. Bart Claeys,Swift Swift is...
Getting honest about sustainability
In December, the EU announced its green deal along with new rules for sustainable finance – the much-discussed ‘taxonomy’. Under the agreement, all financial products that claim to be green or sustainable will have to disclose exactly what proportion of...
New Year’s resolution: fix my trade exceptions
What price is worth paying to reduce failed trades? According to the European Union’s central securities depositories regulation (CSDR), quite a big one. The regulation is scheduled to implement a new mandatory buy-in regime in September 2020, and although market...
Funding Xchange shows how data analytics will transform business lending
Small companies with short trading histories and thin credit files make up a growing part of the economy that established banks are not set up to serve.
Brazilian banking: Caution, unprecedented forces at work
OK, that might still be an exaggeration, just as we begin the decade. But the signs are clearly pointing to an end to Brazil’s famously high-cost banking system, and sooner rather than later. At the end of 2019, the Central...