North America

The global bank has refreshed its senior management but needs to start demonstrating its platform can deliver best-in-class returns.

Italy’s biggest bank has surpassed expectations; higher dividends and share buy-backs could maintain its appeal.

Backed by a powerful domestic franchise, Bank of America is performing well through turbulent markets.

The bank is penetrating deeper into its home markets to complement its long-standing international growth initiatives.

With wealth management outperforming even its senior management’s expectations, the US firm is looking to build in other areas.

After a stellar year for emerging market bonds in 2019, the world’s largest EM bond house says returns don’t look so rosy for 2020.

A no-growth decade won’t stop bankers from chasing fees and trading profits. Mystic Maca looks even further ahead.

Exchange-traded funds (ETF) replication together with growing automation could be set to transform bond market liquidity.

The needle may slowly be moving, but if we continue at this pace sustainable finance will still be a niche rather than integrated into all finance by the end of the century.

It is an almost unchallenged truth that the next crisis will be triggered by over-leveraged corporate borrowers crumbling under the weight of cheap debt that they have taken on over the last decade. Right in the middle of this are the CLO buyers that have made much of that lending possible. But rather than taking fright at the prospect of a slew of triple-C credits in their pools, CLO managers are running straight towards it.

The US firm is cutting just under 2% of its workforce, a reflection of what could be coming in 2020.

Excitement at the prospect of Goldman’s first investor day is mounting.

A lot of bother over BofA.

Could the direct listing format withstand an injection of primary capital-raising? Yes, but not without complications.

Cross-border instant payments gain traction, although the trend is not moving fast enough, say industry experts.

When RBS floated Citizens Financial in 2014, it was the biggest bank IPO since the financial crisis and investors were sceptical of its prospects ‒ five years on and RoE and EPS have doubled, the stock trades at a premium, and the bank has shown it can compete with bigger US banks and non-banks alike. Chief executive Bruce Van Saun discusses what comes next.

Concern is again growing over unsustainable lending to over-leveraged borrowers, financing vastly overpriced assets that are subsequently securitized; only this time it isn’t mortgages – it’s student loans.

A deep and sustainable private-label RMBS market has always eluded the US thanks to the insuperable competitive advantage enjoyed by the GSEs; that could change if plans to remove these guarantees for higher-risk mortgages go ahead.

Elizabeth Warren is showing a unique ability to get under the skin of Wall Street leaders as the US presidential election season heats up.

Wall Street leaders alarmed by the prospect of a populist anti-finance president such as Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders were given some hope when Michael Bloomberg declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination.

A $30 billion bond from AbbVie has given US dollar investment-grade corporate debt volumes a boost late in the year, but net issuance is down and the outlook is mixed. Little visibility on large M&A financings is combining with liability management and late-cycle caution to mean that 2020 might be worse

Why does the tech behemoth want to provide current accounts for users? It’s the data, stupid.

It appears that basic errors rather than deliberate attempts to game the system lay behind Citi’s large miscalculations of UK RWAs and CET1.

A deluge of negative transatlantic headlines overshadows the achievements of Ukraine’s reformers.

A new sport in southeast Asia banking circles is guessing how much it will take for Goldman to settle with the Malaysian state over 1MDB.

The country’s positive real interest rates shine like a beacon for international banks.

Santander targets US retail deposits, as Goldman's Marcus finds online lending tougher than expected.

The benefit of banking digitally is that customers have an immediate record of their spending, but they don't want an app that judges them at the same time.

New proposals by the SEC have shaken the investor community, threatening the ability of smaller shareholders to file resolutions and potentially preventing ESG issues from being heard.

The US private label RMBS market is set to surge if Fannie and Freddie stop guaranteeing higher debt-to-income mortgages in 2021, but eager investors should approach the sector with care.