As bankers prepare to pack their bags for the annual meetings in Washington in October, they’ll be starting to consider what policy initiatives the IMF and World Bank might announce over the busy weekend.

Sean Park, one of the bond market’s best-known characters during his time at Paribas and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, is now engaged in disrupting the financial industry he was once at the sharp end of.

The ice-bucket challenge has invaded popular culture over the summer, and the banking community has not been immune to its dubious pleasures. In late August, Rich Handler, CEO of investment bank Jefferies, took on the challenge but, like many in his industry, attempted to take it one step further – by immersing himself in a jacuzzi filled with ice cubes.

“I’ve got tickets for the world cup final. My boss was on the phone asking me about that and I told him that it was a client event I had booked in six years ago. It was probably a mistake. He pointed out that I didn’t work here six years ago”

“What’s so bad about being good at financing? Are our critics saying that M&A advisory is a skill but that financing is not? Trust me, you can be bad at financing. You can read the markets wrong, be too quick to commit or not commit fast enough. Having the best read on where your clients can raise the money to get a strategic transaction done, how quickly, in what amounts and with what degree of certainty is vital”

WARNING – CONTAINS SPOILERS: It’s amazing how many senior bankers are addicted to the HBO series Game of Thrones. Or then again, perhaps it’s not.

“The primary market has become our liquidity window, offering almost the only chance to put money to work in size. In the US high-grade market we started to see new issues coming through secondary trading levels last year. The primary market is no longer about gaining premium, it’s more about achieving your fill and getting a large quantity of money invested” Juan Landazabal of Deutsche Asset and Wealth Management explains how lack of liquidity in bond markets is driving the order frenzy in new issues

“It’s pretty simple, but it’s mind boggling”

Fresh from its sponsorship of the blockbuster Henri Matisse: The Cutouts exhibition at London’s Tate Modern gallery, Bank of America Merrill Lynch was set to announce the 2014 grant recipients under its Art Conservation Project on June 12 at the Society of Antiquaries in Burlington House. Established in 2010 this initiative has now funded the restoration of 70 works of art in 25 countries around the world. These included Picasso’s Woman Ironing at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York and photographs from the personal collection of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera at La Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City.

Football fans around the world looking forward to running office sweepstakes, emptying online betting accounts and making sure the grad trainee fills in the wall chart each morning of the World Cup that begins on Thursday should thank their lucky stars the tournament can’t possibly be as dull as Goldman Sachs predicts.

Deutsche Bank’s third annual survey of global prices was released in May, giving a guide to the cheapest and most expensive places for standard consumer goods. Here is some advice extracted from the data: purchase your Adidas sports shoes in South Africa; shop in India for Levi jeans and your VW Golf convertible; get your iPhone in Japan; rent a car in China; watch your movies in Malaysia; subscribe to the Economist in Indonesia; buy your Mac from Canada; get your smokes in the Philippines.

The African Development Bank annual meeting celebrated its 50th anniversary during the annual meeting in Kigali this year. It was a grand event, attended by over 2,500 heads of state, ministers, delegates and journalists. The theme this year was ‘What Africa wants’, with an emphasis on what young Africans want – they are, of course, the continent’s future leaders. But it took Euromoney by surprise when it discovered that a photo of its journalist covering the meeting was featured on the homepage of the AfDB website, under the title: ‘What young Africans want’. The journalist is indeed young and does write about Africa, but unfortunately isn’t African. But she wouldn’t mind being one of the continent’s future leaders, if necessary.

“Banks are failing to originate real-economy assets with any enthusiasm not because they can’t fund them but because they can’t own them”

Engaging with the new Libya is no straightforward task for a foreign visitor.

JPMorgan Chase’s annual report was a hefty tome this year. At the very start, CEO Jamie Dimon detailed – rather impressively, some of his competitors grudgingly pointed out to Euromoney – the legal and regulatory challenges and reputational risks facing not just his bank but the industry as a whole.

“I have two options: one, I continue as normal. But one slip of the tongue and I’m terminated, all my stock is clawed back and my career is over. Option two is much more palatable: I may get fired for doing no business, but my stock gets paid and I can get another job”

This year, Euromoney went on the hunt for Africa’s rising stars: A new generation of financiers driving the continent’s economic, financial and capital markets development and taking the region to the next level. See what you think of our choices.

According to a new international poll, money is the most uncomfortable topic of conversation for high-net-worth individuals.

"If this evolves into a refined global framework that clarifies home-host responsibilities and supports cross-border trust, that is an important development. That would help support the global effort to end too-big-to fail. If this encourages the global community to develop thoughtful, consistent architecture in this area, this could end up being a positive outcome overall"

From telecoms to financials to agriculture, more than 700 of Africa’s most established leaders gathered together this March for a three-day forum to build and reinforce regional ties, promote public-private sector partnership and discuss investment opportunities – all in the name of creating a supportive environment for economic and business development on the continent.

"He comes in waves"

"In the 2008 to 2012 cycle, emerging markets were providing the growth dynamic. Now, because you have slightly better growth in the west, it doesn’t mean that all emerging markets are basket cases."

"Emerging markets to investors are a bit like bankers to taxi drivers — not exactly flavour of the month."

Klaus Diederichs has spent his entire career working at JPMorgan. When he started there in 1980, the firm was an afterthought in European investment banking.

"Barely any clients know what their investment performance is, even those who say they are more investment-oriented. The number-one reason clients leave their bankers is not performance, but rather because their phone calls were not returned quickly enough"

"I never thought for a minute I’d get more of an adrenalin rush from working in regulation than I did on a trading desk"

On a cold Monday night in the UK in January, Euromoney sat down to watch a Channel 4 programme from its Dispatches current affairs series.

The art of conversation may not be dead quite yet, but its demise will be hastened further if one recent VC investment bears fruit. Boston-based US start-up Kensho has raised $10 million from a group of seed investors including Google Ventures in order to develop an "intelligent virtual market research assistant" for capital markets trading floors.