Quotes of the month

“I feel very comfortable with the fact that Spanish banks have a lot of retail clients in their shareholder base; I’ve never been bothered by that”

José María Roldán at the European Banking Federation may be comfortable with retail ownership of banks, but not everyone agrees with him

“Executives do not want to lose control of the strategic narrative. They want to get on the front foot and stay ahead of the activists”

David Lomer, co-head of European M&A at JPMorgan, reckons that many corporate executives want to get on with M&A rather than wait to be pushed into it

“We want to be in a liquid credit market. That is our escape route. If the deal is being syndicated to one anchor investor and maybe three others and the issuer has nothing else out there, then that is not for us”

Dan Robinson, chief investment officer, Europe at CIFC, explains that the CLO manager will tread carefully as it expands into Europe

“Some of our employees may not have had the same life experience of our customers. If we want to make people’s financial lives better, we have to understand what drives their lives and why they come to us”

John Jordan, head of the Academy for Consumer and Small Business at Bank of America, wants to better connect with the clients he serves

“Imagine you have Rockefeller, Carnegie, JPMorgan and Mark Zuckerberg all walking down the street at the same time. That’s exactly what’s coming in China”

One thing that Lei Zhang, chief executive of Hillhouse Capital, does not lack is ambition