World Economic Forum Special Report: Contents
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Clive Horwood
Editor
Euromoney magazine |
The world’s financial markets seem to have contracted a bad case of hubris. It’s easy to see why.
For the last five years, since the internet bubble burst, financial markets have been on a seemingly endless upward path. Economic conditions could hardly have been better: low inflation, robust growth and stability have been the order of the day.
This has created its own Goldilocks situation for the global capital markets and the banks that service them. Credit has boomed while default rates remain low. Low interest rates, large amounts of cash and the high risk appetite that stability generates has led to a spike in leverage, in turn fuelling an M&A boom that could yet surpass anything we have witnessed before. There has been huge innovation in the capital markets, notably in derivatives and the structured products...
