China debt: Baoshang bailout rattles lenders
The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) placed Baoshang Bank, a medium-sized regional bank in Inner Mongolia, under the control of China Construction Bank, one of the country’s four megabanks, on May...
Don’t paint Europe’s banks with the same brush
The accepted wisdom that European banking is an unmitigated basket case has become even more entrenched over the past year. While most banks in the region traded well below book value a year ago, since then their shares have fallen...
Refugee lens investing arrives
In the past two to three years, more initiatives have emerged to connect finance with refugees. “The humanitarian response system is important work for providing basic necessities for survival, but everyone engaged recognizes it is not sustainable,” says founder of...
China bond market: Dodgy numbers undermine ratings
By Rebecca Feng A borrower’s financials are a crucial element of any credit rating. Yet in China, ratings analysts privately complain that some of the financial statements being presented to them are either dressed up or entirely falsified, even though...
Hong Kong kicks a green goal with $1 billion bond
Hong Kong makes no secret of its ambition to be an important regional centre for green finance – part of its quest to stay relevant through reinvention. So the arrival – at long last – of its first sovereign green...
Cryptocurrency: Facebook’s Libra – is this how we get to responsible fintech?
Mobile banking and payments have swiftly reduced the number of unbanked around the world in the order of billions. But we’re very far off being able to claim that those now entering the financial system as a result are accessing...
Argentina: It’s time to take money off the table
Kirchner is calculating that Peronism will get more voters if she isn’t the lead candidate, given her high rejection rate. That’s logical – and so too was president Macri’s response in choosing Miguel Angel Pichetto, a non-Kirchner Peronist to bolster...
Treasurers need to limber up for Libor reform
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is just one regulator that has directed firms to move away from the use of benchmarks such as the London interbank offered rate (Libor) in favour of alternative overnight risk-free rates. The problem for corporate...
The Bank of England’s recipe for managed decline
In any legal business, the ability to operate is at the discretion of the government. This is particularly true in banking, where a licence has traditionally been akin to a financial system sinecure. Now, ultra-low and negative central bank interest...
Slack: Direct listings are a bit more like IPOs than you think
Slack, a US messaging company, last week became the second big tech firm to use a direct listing as its route to the public markets. And so came the excited chatter, just as it did with Spotify in April 2018:...