Wealth management: Bank of Morgan Stanley
In April, Morgan Stanley chief executive James Gorman announced that Shelley O’Connor, who has co-headed the wealth management business since 2016, is taking over the private bank and the institutional banking unit, leaving Andy Saperstein to run wealth management solo....
Deutsche Bank has no plan B
Christian Sewing, CEO of Deutsche Bank The day after ending merger talks with Commerzbank, Christian Sewing, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, put on his bravest face to announce a 9% decline in revenues during the first quarter of 2019 compared with...
First skirmishes in Brazilian fintech war
The growth of fintechs in Brazil has been closely monitored by market participants for years. The narrative is well established: the high adoption of digital technologies (71% of the population has a smart phone) in the huge, entrepreneurial economy has...
Blue bonds get boost from TNC and World Bank
Ocean conservation finance (blue finance) took a large step forward in April on the back of two announcements. The first came from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), which revealed its plans to put $1.6 billion to work towards marine conservation through...
Saudi Aramco and the risk of inflation
There was no question that Saudi Aramco’s long-anticipated debut bond issue would be oversubscribed, but even the most seasoned market observer must have been slightly taken aback by the size of the order book for the deal. Bookrunners Citi, Goldman...
Country risk: Argentina is on a bumpy ride to better fortunes
President Macri needs to rein in Argentina’s economic problems to win re-election in October Argentina’s risks have continued to edge higher this year, despite capital flows to emerging markets benefiting from a pause in the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate...
Banks can help to alleviate the refugee crisis
According to recent data compiled by the UNHCR, there are 40 million internally displaced people in the world. Add to this another 25.4 million refugees and 3.1 million asylum seekers and that makes 68.5 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. Some...
Mexican banks face revenues and cost squeeze
Mexican banks are facing a tougher-than-expected operating environment in 2019. In the short term, a sluggish economy is constraining credit demand growth and forecasts for interest rate cuts will pressure net interest margins (NIMs). In February, the Mexican central bank reported...
Sub-investment grade debt: Blended risk
Of all the changes in the sub-investment grade capital markets over the last decade, the blurring of the boundary between loans and bonds might have the most lasting impact. It has spurred consistent growth in multi-asset strategy funds on the...
Lyft share price crash sucks the air out of Uber’s IPO
“What is Amazon?” one banker asks, I hope rhetorically. “Clearly it is not just an online shop.” To my relief, he answers himself: “It is a price discovery tool.” His colleague objects, however. “Surely, it is an automated supply chain.”...