Crédit Agricole plan flaunts modern mutualism
There are hard political reasons why Crédit Agricole formally set out the rationale for its existence – for the first time, it said – in its new medium-term plan on Thursday. Not least is president Emmanuel Macron’s new law, passed...
Banking: The world’s unlikely hero in sustainable finance
“It’s an amazing time to be inbanking,” a senior banker told me in late May. He seemed shocked and a bit embarrassed to have said it out loud but continued: “This generation of bankers, and maybe the next, have been...
Facebook’s Libra isn’t finished yet
No fintech initiative has ever had such an extraordinary impact as that of Facebook’s Libra. The mere announcement of a plan to launch a reserve-backed, blockchain-based stablecoin representing a new world currency immediately drew hostile reactions from governments concerned at...
Country risk: Economics is not the only factor putting Asia in a quandary
Asia is sound, superficially. The region is, after all, one of several showing improvement in Euromoney’s country risk survey this year along with the Caribbean, CIS and sub-Saharan Africa. Among the investor locations analysts have upgraded are Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia,...
Dire financial results bode badly for Uber’s push into payments
Uber’s second-quarter results showed a net loss of to $5.2 billion up from $878 million the year before. On the back of the news in August, its shares plummeted and have remained between $28 and $35 a share – way...
Europe’s retail FX CFD ban ‘ineffective’ before being scrapped
Poland’s financial supervision authority Komisja Nadzoru Finansowego (KNF) The European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) recently confirmed it would not renew the temporary restriction on the marketing, distribution or sale of CFDs to retail clients in the EU. A spokesperson...
Swollen at-risk debt and illiquid private equity are big risks
The IMF’s global financial stability report, released in October, once again drew attention to the build-up of speculative and at-risk corporate debt in large economies, notably the US and Europe. Debt owed by companies whose earnings are insufficient to cover...
Deutsche’s restated earnings show how much ECM will shrink without equities
An odd little detail of Deutsche Bank’s restated historic earnings to take into account the firm’s new structure has revealed how much its equity capital markets business gained from the existence of the bank’s secondary equities franchise, which it is...
Brazil passes Chilean-style pension reform as protests engulf Santiago
A demonstrator runs from tear gas during a protest against Chile’s state economic model Sometimes one wonders if we really are living in a simulation – and then we see ironies so incredible: narratives surely too contrived to be served...
Nordea’s new king of costs makes his mark
Frank Vang-Jensen is making no excuses for sweeping aside his predecessor’s record, as he leads Scandinavia’s biggest bank into a new era of austerity. A month after Nordea named him its new chief executive, Vang-Jensen’s plan for the coming three...