Europe
all page content
all page content
Main body page content
LATEST ARTICLES
-
As mandated real-time payments loom, Europe’s banks and other payment providers must look at modernising legacy infrastructure.
-
Corporates’ longstanding complaint on banks’ payments offerings is that they don’t know what they are being charged for but suspect it is too much. Airwallex now provides an alternative at global scale.
-
BBVA could have bought Banco Sabadell much more cheaply in 2020. Sabadell’s CEO César González-Bueno has since turned his bank around. But BBVA’s return to the negotiating table comes at a time when European banking may be moving to a new and more confident phase.
-
Restructuring HSBC, like painting the Forth bridge, is a never-ending job. While Noel Quinn has done well, the board must not make another ham-fisted transition.
-
The body responsible for settling about $6.5 trillion of global daily FX trades has decided against extending its deadlines to accommodate non-US participants who still want to use its next-day settlement service. But it expects the impact to be limited – far too limited to justify the complexity that a change would impose on its members.
-
The two European banks are both trying to de-emphasise their investment banks and want to build up areas where they see weakness. Barclays is later to this party than Deutsche, but both will have found encouragement in the first three months of 2024.
-
A private credit market growing so fast, away from the oversight of bank regulators, may be a new source of systemic risk. With smaller investors taking greater exposure to an asset class whose high returns and low losses look almost too good to be true, there could be trouble ahead.
-
Quarterly survey reveals that UK finance professionals may be feeling more upbeat about prospects, but that this is yet to translate into a willingness to take greater risk onto balance sheets.
-
UK fintechs attracted more investment than all European rivals combined in a tough funding market last year, but a broken IPO market leaves them with nowhere to go.
-
Rumours that FAB is in exploratory talks with a Turkish lender, together with hopes for a big-ticket IPO, point to optimism despite the dire outlook on inflation.
-
The EU’s Instant Payments Regulation may have fired the starting gun on real-time payments in Europe, but many banks remain stuck in the blocks.
-
Isbank’s chief executive Hakan Aran sees embedded finance and an innovative approach to bank branches as the future as the Turkish bank looks to rebuild on a better market environment for its 100-year anniversary.
-
The good news is that bank executives don’t see big loan losses ahead; the bad news is that they lack the confidence and vision to invest in the business.
-
The Greek bailout fund’s exit from Piraeus Bank last month was the country’s biggest post-crisis privatization. The bank’s chief executive, Christos Megalou, tells Euromoney that this is more than a capital-return story. It’s also about growth: in the economy, in wealth and asset management, and, thanks to neobank Snappi, internationally.
-
After a decade of restructuring, EFG International ramped up hiring last year – above all from Credit Suisse. Chief executive Giorgio Pradelli talks about the firm’s scope to lead a wave of Swiss-bank consolidation, while doubling down on new wealth from the Middle East and Asia.
-
Credit Suisse’s domestic bank was arguably the failed group’s best and strongest division. One year after the rescue, UBS is not the only one trying to feast on its domestic wealth-management and corporate-banking leftovers. Other Swiss and international players also hope to benefit from the longer-term fallout in Switzerland. Will the rush to pick up the remnants of the fallen champion pay off?
-
The decision by the US SEC to drop mandatory Scope 3 reporting weakens global emissions reporting standards. However, many corporate issuers are already using Scope 3 performance targets on sustainability-linked transactions for non-regulatory reasons. Are the debt and equities markets leading companies onto ESG ground upon which regulators fear to tread?
-
Norwegian wealth manager Formue has been growing revenues and assets since opening in 2000. It has done this by financially educating people who never gave much thought to wealth planning and by getting people to like it.
-
BNP Paribas Wealth Management’s philanthropy solutions have been a noteworthy part of its wider positive impact offering since 2008. The firm aims to provide clients, free of charge, with proposals that fit each step of their philanthropic journey.
-
In its home market, Deutsche Bank has expanded its leadership with high net-worth (HNW) customers, as well as with the ultra-high net-worth (UHNW) clients that are becoming a core focus in Germany, Europe and cross the globe.
-
Societe Generale Private Banking, the wealth-management arm of Societe Generale, is a worldwide private bank with a strong European base. It had €140 billion of assets under management at the end of September 2023.
-
BNP Paribas Wealth Management has been named Western Europe's best private bank for sustainability this year. One of the many factors supporting this decision is the banks’ ability to embed sustainability into all its product and services by prioritising portfolio assessment and the upskilling of its bankers.
-
BNP Paribas Wealth Management shows “a strong dedication to enhancing the client experience through digital means, innovation and research”, according to the judging panel for this year’s private banking awards.
-
Serving the next generation of wealthy individuals and family members is at the heart of everything Julius Baer does. The Swiss pure-play wealth manager is cognisant of the vast amount of wealth in the process of being handed from one set of family hands to the next; it sees this segment as a key vehicle for it to, in its words, “live out [its] purpose” and “create value beyond wealth”.
-
The wealth-management divisions of national-champion universal banks have won most of the regional private banking awards in Western Europe. But Lombard Odier offers a powerful reminder of the capabilities of a pure-play private bank, owned by its managing partners who follow a business model solely focused on managing their clients’ assets.
-
BNP Paribas Wealth Management operates across 17 countries, serving a client base of entrepreneurs, family offices and high net-worth individuals.
-
Caixabank Private Banking wins the award for best domestic private bank in Spain this year having demonstrated strong performance and launched important enhancements in many sectors.
-
The banks in each market that have excelled across a range of core private banking activities during the past 12 months.
-
LGT Private Banking is the private bank of the Princely House of Liechtenstein. Founded in 1920, it operates according to the same values and convictions that have guided the building and managing of its owner’s family assets for almost 900 years, across 26 generations: thinking and acting entrepreneurially; a long-term focus; openness to new developments and technologies; and a disciplined approach to risk and resources.
-
Few manage to do discretionary portfolio management better than Julius Baer today. The largest pure-play private bank by assets under management has been busy during its latest strategic cycle, which runs for three years through 2025.
-
Deutsche Bank Private Bank is building a focus on the most challenging customer segment of all: ultra-high net-worth individuals and family offices.
-
BNP Paribas has been relentlessly fine-tuning its secondary equities business in Europe for more than a decade. While the primary focus has been on reaching an affordable offering for institutional investor customers of its markets business, clients of the wealth-management business are now also benefiting.
-
JPMorgan has been making a strong push in private banking in Europe, the Middle East and Africa over the past three years, substantially growing its numbers of advisers and clients, opening offices from Athens and Brussels to Copenhagen and Manchester, while taking advantage of its big technology budget to invest in new capabilities.
-
Formue is this year’s winner for best bank for discretionary portfolio management in the Nordics and Baltics. Key to its success was the lender’s transition from a manually processed portfolio construction to an industry-leading portfolio and advice digital solution: Advent Genesis.
-
DNB Private Banking has been named this year’s best bank for family-office services in the Nordics and Baltics.
-
Amid strong competition between the region’s leading private lenders, Carnegie Private Banking is the judging panel’s choice for best private bank in the Nordics and Baltics this year. The bank has also been recognized in three other categories: family office services, investment research and ultra-high net-worth individuals.
-
Carnegie Private Banking is this year’s winner for best bank for ultra-high net-worth individuals in the Nordics and Baltics.
-
The banks in each market that have excelled across a range of core private banking activities during the past 12 months.
-
The award for the best international private bank in the Nordics and Baltics goes to JPMorgan Private Bank this year. Among other things, the US lender impressed the judging panel with the philanthropic commitments it has facilitated for clients in the region.
-
Carnegie Private Banking wins the Sweden’s best domestic private bank award for the second consecutive year for the growth, investment and development it has made across its private banking business.
-
Nowadays, wealthy investors are not only looking for further insights and analytical expertise to guide them through uncertain markets but also for the ability to integrate non-financial preferences into their decision-making.
-
Sustainability principles are embedded across all the private banking products and services offered by Formue, the Nordics and Baltics’ best private bank for sustainability this year.
-
For its mix of global capability with local expertise and philanthropic efforts, JPMorgan wins the award for Sweden’s best international private bank.
-
Chief executive Andrea Orcel has made it clear that Central and Eastern Europe remains at the heart of UniCredit, not least through the purchase of Greek lender Alpha Bank’s Romanian operations last year.
-
The banks in each market that have excelled across a range of core private banking activities during the past 12 months.
-
OTP Private Banking is putting resources into sustainability and showing signs of progress in the area. At a group level, improved scores by several environmental, social and governance ratings agencies are testament to its improvements in the area recently. For example, it moved from a medium- to low-risk ranking by Sustainalytics.
-
Over the past decade, OTP Group has grown as a regional bank in central and eastern Europe – even as other international banks have begun to retreat from the region. Listed in Budapest since 1995, the group now covers 12 countries, counting 17 million customers. Although it is headquartered in Hungary, it also considers itself a market leader in Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Slovenia in terms of the overall banking market, including retail.
-
UniCredit’s importance as a private bank in Central and Eastern Europe is particularly evident in its service offering for high net-worth individuals.
-
OTP Private Banking’s approach to digital development and innovation is predicated on a regional approach, helping the firm benefit from its presence across central and eastern Europe.
-
OTP Private Banking says it has recently embarked on an overhaul of its discretionary portfolio management services. This involves redefining the workflow to reflect topical industry themes, such as the focus on environmental, social and governance, as well as the implementation of what it describes as revolutionary new front-office software and a focus on increasing client alpha.
-
While welcome, initiatives by the government and financial sector bodies designed to make it easier for companies to raise funds in the UK face a number of obstacles.
-
A wall of liquidity among investors has helped to drive a busy start to the year for bond issuers, as they rush to capture tight spreads.
-
The German lender’s decision to put its chips on southeast Asia is paying off handsomely. Under the leadership of Asia CEO Alexander von zur Mühlen, Deutsche Bank has doubled its capital in Vietnam and Indonesia, with more to come, moved a host of global roles to the region, and has seen Asean eclipse its India and China business in terms of growth and absolute numbers.
-
Asset managers and industry regulators face operational challenges around the tokenization of private assets.
-
Caution at local commercial banks – coupled with the eagerness of large investment banks to foster relationships with private equity players – means large real-estate deals fuelled by back leverage could be primed for a comeback in Europe.
-
Corporates seeking to leverage sustainable investment opportunities continue to be restricted by the lack of reliable data on which to base their assessments.
-
The Basel committee is shocked – shocked! – that some banks might be reporting inflated leverage ratios.
-
The UK startup is now a fully regulated bank and private funds are backing its vision to embed regulated banking in non-financial companies as well as fintechs.
-
With some big deals launching this week, Europe’s IPO pipeline is flowing at last. If they do well, they should put to bed the notion that ‘private IPOs’ are what is needed to provide exit routes for sponsors. A handful of recent deals shows that the biggest driver of success is doing the simple things well.
-
The UK Chancellor has big plans for the tech sector.
-
Thinner margins across the banking industry hit smaller banks harder. But investor pressures are also less of an issue for mutually owned lenders.
-
For a deeply unpopular government with little room to manoeuvre, the chance to bribe voters with a cheap offer of bank shares is irresistible. The bank in question is now well-run and profitable while its stock still trades at a discount. But the great NatWest share offer will do little to revive UK capital markets.
-
The UBS chief investment office’s sustainable and impact investing strategist wants to avoid measurement for the sake of measurement, but responding to client demand for more data while ensuring its readability remains a challenge.
-
The newest ESG trend in retail banking might be a niche offering for now, but all banks will have to take it seriously someday.
-
Leading commercial banks are focusing on their approach to relationship management to reassure corporate customers that they are being listened to.
-
There are sensible elements to CEO Slawomir Krupa’s plans for Societe Generale, but their communication needs attention.
-
In 2020, Deutsche Bank’s Asia chief, Alexander von zur Mühlen, placed more of his chips on fast-growing southeast Asia. As global firms diversify out of China, his prescience and willingness to deliver on his convictions is starting to pay off.
-
Investors and staff at Societe Generale are slowly starting to understand chief executive Slawomir Krupa’s brutally honest approach to the bank’s many challenges. Taking them with him as he embarks on his restructuring plan may prove a more delicate task.
-
Diego De Giorgi’s arrival as Standard Chartered’s CFO coincides with a shift away from asset shrinkage and a “final push” on digital transformation.
-
A private debt hangover in real estate is threatening middle-class retirement savings across Germany. Local banks, which focused more on senior loans, should be safer. But are these lenders ready to finance the recovery in commercial property that the German market so badly needs?
-
Even after the rally on its latest restructuring plan, investors still value the UK bank at such a wide discount to book that management must consider radical action.
-
Barclays chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan intends to stop a low-returning investment bank from dragging the rest of the group down with it. He argues that most of the improvements are within the bank’s own grasp. That is debatable, and in any case hardly reassuring.
-
The UK government’s impending sale to retail investors of a big stake in the bank informs the shadow-play guidance on this year’s earnings.
-
Corporates continue to exhibit worrying levels of complacency when it comes to the implications of rate rises for their bottom line.
-
Extracting value from Russia via a stake in Strabag previously owned by Oleg Deripaska shouldn’t be confused with a proper disentanglement from Russia by Raiffeisen. The main impetus for the transaction may, in fact, lie with Deripaska and Strabag’s other shareholders.
-
Trade-receivables securitization transactions are flourishing as corporates seek more affordable access to long-term financing.
-
Banks need to start quantifying the legal risks of both climate action and inaction.
-
It is not hard to find short-term worries over global markets’ state of readiness for the US’s transition to one-day settlement in late May. But even if the UK, Europe and those Asian markets still using two-day settlement can adapt to the shift in the longer term, they will also face intense pressure to lessen their dislocation from the US cycle by copying its move. Many also fear the ultimate end-game of same-day or even instant settlement.
-
The Sino-Swiss corridor, set up to encourage Chinese firms to sell global depositary receipts to international investors in the European state, took off fast in 2022. But a host of challenges, from Chinese regulatory concerns to an apparent lack of global interest, has stalled its progress.
-
The midcap broker needs new business lines to survive a prolonged IPO drought.
-
Record regional bank profits, plus strong capital ratios in Western Europe, have fuelled hope for more bank acquisitions in Central and Eastern Europe. The uncertain effect of recent court rulings on Swiss franc mortgages, however, is a big obstacle to deals in Poland.
-
Corporates are adopting a variety of approaches to mitigate the impact of uncertainty in foreign exchange markets caused by divergence in economic policy and performance.
-
They already dominate the investment banking business in Europe, and now the leading US banks have their eyes on an even bigger prize. They see their vast investments in the digital technology transforming payments and transaction services and their retained global presences as the keys to winning even greater revenues from Europe’s midsize corporates.
-
Appealing to issuers by removing investor protections makes no sense when London’s decline as a listing venue stems from domestic investors abandoning the UK market.
-
Collaboration between national banks has seen widespread adoption of mobile payments schemes. The French and German-led approach of focusing on a single European scheme could therefore be seen as a distraction. But is it the only real way of keeping US payment companies at bay?
-
The London Stock Exchange Group’s head of sustainable finance strategic initiatives wants climate data to redefine the act of indexing.
-
Ambitious brokerage firms have precipitated a shift in demand for FX licences, with interest in regulated European and Asian markets on the increase at the expense of offshore jurisdictions.
-
After overseeing radical transformations at Bawag and Hamburg Commercial Bank, Cerberus Capital Management now has ultimate control of HSBC’s French retail bank. Former UniCredit banker Niccolò Ubertalli is running the new business, and reveals a very different strategy to the private equity company’s German-speaking antecedents in European banking.
-
Recently, investors have welcomed Turkish USD debt with open arms. As 2024 approaches, prospective borrowers will be hoping that the renewed interest can last.
-
Outgoing supervisory chair Andrea Enria warns against ‘complacency’ – despite higher capital ratios at eurozone banks – as he announces new requirements on banks to tackle investment-banking leverage, liquidity shortages and leveraged finance risks.