News and opinion on finance

In Beirut’s Karantina, an area devastated by an explosion at the city’s port on August 4, volunteers have stepped in to help clean up its streets. They are helping the area’s vulnerable ...

As businesses around the world emerge from lockdowns and hope to rebuild their revenues back towards normal, there’s a new alternative data source to track every step of the journey. Sidetrade, a ...

Europe’s neobanks are switching their attention to small business banking and expansion in the US, as they strive for global scale and profitability. Business banking will soon be a bigger revenue earner ...

Bó, RBS’s digital bank for retail customers, announced in early May it was to close after just six months in business, with only 11,000 customers. RBS’s digital bank for businesses, Mettle, will ...

Norwegian Air’s nail-biting $1 billion debt-for-equity swap with bondholders and lessors on May 4 has given the struggling airline vital breathing room, allowing it to access up to an equivalent of $290 ...

China has opened the door wider to foreign funds keen to invest in its fast-growing market for distressed bank debt, allowing them to apply for licences for the first time to operate ...

Investors may already be eagerly hunting bargains amid the carnage in the coronavirus bear market One large and powerful group of investors, with plenty of money to put to work, should be ...

When financial messaging provider Swift published its latest RMB Tracker in late January, almost no one noticed. For good reason. Anyone not focused on US politics or Australian fires was fretting about ...

Emerging market (EM) manufacturers were facing difficulties even before the coronavirus pandemic decimated international demand for many of their products. The Asian Development Bank estimated that $1.5 trillion of requested trade finance ...

'The broader question is whether the severity will ultimately lie closer to 2008 or the 1929 Great Depression'The US risk score declined in Euromoney’s country risk survey in Q1 2020, although it ...

Fintechs in emerging Europe have seen a surge in demand for their services since the start of the Covid-19 crisis as consumers move away from cash and businesses look for new sources ...

Picture this: you are the leader of a developing country. Out of 1.4 billion people, nearly 70% live in rural areas, over 20% are illiterate and 22% live below the poverty line ...

Duomo square, Milan, on Wednesday: devoid of the usual throng of people on the second day of a lockdown across Italy Italy could provide a showcase for what is to come elsewhere ...

Workers pass a thermal scanner as part of the coronavirus outbreak precautions during a media preview at the Singapore Airshow on Saturday Singapore is the latest country to feel the heat from ...

The shock resulting from the lockdown measures taken to stop the spread of coronavirus is once again dominating the global risk picture, causing analysts to downgrade key economic factors in second quarter ...

One of the curiosities of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the economic carnage it has wrought, is that it has not prompted countries to draw down on the funds they have built to ...

David Li, chairman of Bank of East Asia Bank of East Asia (BEA) and activist shareholder Elliott Management put a long-running legal dispute on hold, announcing a strategic review of the Hong ...

Asia is the fastest-growing transaction banking market globally, as banks vie for cash and trade business beyond their core remit. European banks are particular attracted to the region, as corporates based in ...

How does the banking industry look as we enter a new decade? It’s worth taking a look back at the one that just finished before we do that. January 2010 was still ...

It’s not meant to be like this. In the new digital world, banks are supposed to be financial supermarkets, developing internationally transportable distribution platforms with high-value third-party products. Even loans and deposits ...

Just days after a deadly airstrike on Iranian general Qassem Soleimani shook the markets, Israel sold a $3 billion Eurobond to investors who say that, despite early fears of an imminent escalation, ...

Can you bring me up to date with what you’ve established so far about how the Wirecard situation links to the Philippines? First, the statement from the governor [Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas ...

If any European lender has had a good 2020 so far, it’s Handelsbanken. Sweden’s second biggest bank was the ideal of a more cautious, consistent and focused business model after the 2008 ...

Since the global financial crisis, most FX markets have enjoyed a decade of extremely low volatility. While there have been initiatives around regulatory compliance, the market has otherwise been quiet, with volatility ...

At the height of the global financial crisis (GFC), China staved off recession by turning the dial on stimulus up to 11. This time around, with Western governments pledging trillions of dollars ...

Lisa Robins, global head of transaction banking at Standard Chartered, vividly remembers the September 11 terror attacks on New York’s twin towers and what followed. At the time, Robins lived in New ...

At the start of April, Exabel, an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning platform for active asset managers, partnered with 1010data, an alternative data provider to the retail, consumer packaged goods and ...

The government of Dubai has issued a sukuk for the first time in four years, proving that even amid historically low oil prices and a global pandemic, funding options remain for the ...

Pandemic bonds, and their cousins in the broader catastrophe bond sector, are peculiar animals. They are frequently complex, somewhat opaque, and they must wade through the mire of morbid possibility. But at ...

There’s light at the end of the tunnel, but not all are on the right track The mean average global risk score improved from the third to fourth quarter as business confidence ...