Peru’s low risks call for A-ratings across the board
Peruvian festival mural: Credit-rating party invites have gone out, but so far only Moody’s has RSVP’d Economists and other risk experts taking part in Euromoney’s country risk survey awarded a more favourable risk score to Peru in Q3 2018, including...
Two African banking heavyweights launch investment platform for the continent
Charles Kie, NACP Charles Kie, formerly of Ecobank, and co-founder Paulo Gomes, formerly of the World Bank, on Wednesday announced their launch of pan-African investment platform NACP. Its aim is to help grow small and medium-sized enterprises across Africa, as...
Why Spain’s hostile environment matters even to its global banks
An activist from the Mortgage Victims’ Association takes part in a protest outside the Supreme Court in Madrid in November Public opinion is vital to a bank’s success, wherever it is based, but it is particularly important in Spain. This...
FSB: Libor ‘will not be sustainable’ after 2021
Regulators may be reasonably happy with the progress being made on alternative reference rates to Libor, but the need to clarify exactly what will happen to instruments referencing Libor once the benchmark no longer exists is becoming hard to ignore....
Mifid II is hurting, but there is no way back
One year on from the entry into force of Europe’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid II), the deleterious impact on equity research is now clearly apparent. Mifid II’s squeeze on brokers’ revenues is industry-wide. Individual firms will always argue it is...
Economic impact of Brexit: special focus
Banks in the eurozone will not be able to count any of their English-law bail-inable debt toward their pending requirements if no Brexit deal is reached between the EU and UK – translating into some €126 billion of subordinated bonds....
Forget bitcoin: stablecoins will change how money works
On Monday October 8, research firm Autonomous Next published its latest monthly figures for the volume of funds raised through initial coin offerings (ICOs), the revolutionary mechanism for founders of new crypto companies exploring ways to exchange value and ownership...
Trade finance: Fines do not dent ING’s commodities zeal
Commodity trade finance, from shipments of Argentine soybeans to Kazakh oil, is one of the few areas of international banking where Europeans maintain a clear lead. The French and even the Dutch still dominate, despite swingeing cuts to their global...
Sideways: Ken of Arabia sticks to one costume – as for the Uber guy…
At least the founder and chief executive of investment bank Moelis & Co resisted the temptation to wear traditional Middle Eastern clothes as a sign of his commitment to the regime and its ability to dispense enormous fees in the...
What do investors want? ESG research. When do they need it? Yesterday
We have just 12 years to get climate change under control, the UN announced in October, so we had better get investing. But unfortunately it is becoming clearer that investing in UN sustainable development goals (SDG)-aligned countries, companies and products...