“As soon as you have climbed one regulatory hill then the next one is already looming”

What’s in a name? Plenty, it seems, if it’s similar to one on a sanctions list.

"It’s got nothing to do with the market. It’s the fact that our f***ing governments haven’t got their f***ing acts together to make the necessary f***ing planning to address climate change and have spent 20 years p***ing in the wind wasting our money on lawyers in Paris"

Few people can say they have devoted almost 40 years of their life to the service of one company, Very few indeed can claim that they’ve overseen the development of that company from having one niche product to being a company of 50 businesses worth in excess of £1 billion. But that’s exactly what Richard Ensor, who retired as chairman of Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC at the end of September, has achieved.

“In the US, there are still way too many banks and consolidation must happen. If you believe that, you should be a leader, not a follower”

“Let’s be frank: some of our political leaders get a little too excited”

August’s stock market gyrations caused particular alarm for Ray Soifer, a consultant based in Green Valley, Arizona, perhaps best known for his Harvard MBA index.

Officials from the UK’s financial conduct authority (FCA) visited Barclays’ offices 186 times during 2014, according to a freedom of information request submitted by the UK’s Guardian newspaper. They visited HSBC 85 times, RBS 65 times and Lloyds 58 times.

Since taking over the reins at Standard Chartered, Bill Winters has wasted little time in ripping up the old playbook of his predecessor, Peter Sands.

Euromoney staff may have committed some humiliating faux pas around the world over the years, but we like to think we broke new ground by accidentally climbing out a window in the middle of a business lunch in Iran.

“I remember the morning I discovered my car had been burnt out outside the house. I’ve had some close security, but I never wanted them to be overly obvious and get in the way. I mean: they hadn’t attacked the house or anything. They had just burnt the car. It was a message: ‘People are angry’. I understood that”

This reporter expected a smug tweet on Greece last month to elicit a Radio 4-friendly guffaw from one or two of our modestly-numbered Twitter followers. But as any trader will tell you: timing is everything.

It was to this journalist’s surprise that when making a short trip to Johannesburg for business, she was to be transported back to the airport at the end of her trip by electric car.

Each year, Euromoney’s Awards for Excellence prompt a variety of pitches – good and bad – from banks all over the globe. In Africa, which has some of the most under-developed countries in terms of banking, not only is it important for banks’ pitches to highlight strong fundamentals, profit growth and shareholder returns, but technological innovation that can leapfrog older, dated methods in banking and sometimes be the key to winning an award.

Digital technology is set to change banking fundamentally in the years ahead. Euromoney has been writing about this a lot, while quietly wondering what it might do with a dollar for every time a grey-haired senior banker solemnly asserts it. Hence, no doubt, the email that pings into our inbox from Silicon Valley, promoting what looks like a new trade-matching or wealth-management service, called MillionaireMatch, which boasts that it runs a ‘no riff raff policy’. Quite right too, in this era of endless fines for market rigging and other offences.

Ivan Fallon, former deputy editor of the Sunday Times, has written a book on the inside story of how Lloyds Bank fell from being a bastion of stability in the UK banking sector to needing a capital injection and bailout by HM government.

Awards for Excellence 2015: Best bank for corporate social responsibility

A more transparent investment strategy could benefit Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund.

“I keep telling him to grow a set of balls. I really shouldn’t be talking to my CEO like that”

Euromoney isn’t into bashing the FX market on the whole. In fact, we are supporters of it and what the future has in store. But – and there is a big but – $10 billion in fines is no laughing matter, so a bit more rule-following isn’t a bad idea.

We have all been there. That meeting with your boss to discuss pay usually leaves you feeling frustrated and is best dealt with in the pub over a pint and a rant into the sympathetic ear of a friend.

Further reading

Fans of Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank’s seasoned head of global fundamental credit strategy, enjoy his regular insights on macro strategy delivered in lucid, and often humorous, prose. Euromoney is thoroughly impressed to learn that he has another, so to speak, string to his bow, namely playing the piano.

The Canadian dollar typically trades in the shadow of the all-powerful US currency, but last month that momentarily changed as global interest in the ‘loonie’ soared to intergalactic highs.

“I have had meetings with any number of start-up direct-lending platforms, and although I think there is a small need for them, the vast majority of them are total bullshit and a crisis waiting to happen”

The 40th renewal of the Hong Kong Sevens was a welcome triumph for its lead sponsor, HSBC.

Before interviewing a minister of finance, it’s important to be thoroughly prepared. When Euromoney met South Africa’s Nhlanhla Nene in Cape Town in March, we thought it wise to study his most recent budget, his political alliances and his reputation among the electorate. After all, it’s best to be ready for any eventuality.

When Euromoney visited the hulking headquarters of Romania’s finance ministry in Bucharest in December to interview Ioana Petrescu, the then occupant of that prestigious office, we were taken by the portraits in the entrance foyer that honoured those who had served before her.

“I’m reminded of what Bill Gates once said about building tech companies: that the market typically overestimates what should be achieved in the first three years and underestimates what can be achieved in 10”

“Issuers can tap the US private placement market but we want to get to the next leg down. In the long term European corporates want their own source of demand”