North America

While an increasing number of studies point to diversity having a positive impact on business performance, it needs to be coupled with inclusion if financial services companies want to see cultural and societal change.

A-shares included at low weight; handful of large-caps with tiny weighting.

FX industry utilities have been described as a mechanism for substantially reducing post-trade costs, but while market participants are interested in the potential efficiencies they offer, enthusiasm for implementing such solutions remains patchy.

BNP Paribas (BNPP) is the latest bank to be fined by US regulators over misconduct in its FX business. The French bank now hopes to put the episode behind it, having restructured the relevant businesses and improved its compliance processes.

The past few years have seen CLS beef up its offerings in operational risk management well beyond its core settlement business, with services such as netting and compression; the expansion of its aggregation service to emerging market (EM) FX is the latest string to its bow.

A BNY Mellon study shows that big investors have finally accepted that the free-flow of collateral and ease of funding through repo they enjoyed pre-crisis will never return and they are now urgently seeking new ways to finance securities transactions that do not depend on bank balance sheets.

The US Fed’s journey to balance sheet normalization might not be as steady as many have assumed as inflation stubbornly refuses to play its part.

Vantiv's deal to buy Worldpay may be only the first of a number of high-profile takeovers in the payments industry as a fragmented market looks for global answers.

It is rare for financial market professionals to feel they are helping to save the world, but a new capital markets deal from the World Bank to help the poorest countries cope with pandemics might be doing just that

European wealth managers are battling it out in Asia but North America is where private banking revenues are.

Lines are being blurred as advisers get better at financing, and firms that used to lead through balance sheet up their game in advisory.

Banks consistently offer more competitive prices in spot FX than their ECN counterparts — for all but a few minutes per day — according to research conducted by Pragma, a provider of algorithmic trading technology.

Although processes are in place to limit the impact of rogue algorithms, there are further steps electronic FX trading networks can take to protect themselves from cybercriminal activity.

FX algo use is steadily rising, according to a report by Greenwich Associates, with the most dramatic rises seen among corporate traders scrambling to demonstrate best execution, as stipulated by the FX global code of conduct.

The use of corporate and virtual cards as part of a working capital management solution has become a defined strategy for some treasurers, who are also seeing the benefits of having an additional level of data.

A survey released by index provider Coalition on May 24 revealed the grim state of FX business lines.

Almost two decades after the principles of machine learning were applied to FX trading, challenges remain to be addressed for the technology to become ubiquitous.

Competition has become intense in the FX portfolio compression business in recent months, but until now the focus has been on more liquid G10 currencies.

Imagine that you run investment banking in Europe for a sizeable foreign firm whose name still enjoys a little cachet from its heyday 20 years ago when it figured high in the debt and equity arranger league tables and which sought to invest in Europe and rebuild scale after the global financial crisis.

One year after its humiliating withdrawal from European equities, Nomura’s international businesses are humming. The Japanese firm is set to expand in emerging markets and in the US, while pivoting towards a bigger presence in risk, particularly credit risk. But it still faces its age-old conundrum: outside Japan, it is too big to be a boutique, but not big enough to be a global bulge-bracket investment bank. Can Nomura find a fitting new position as the entire industry restructures?

A large part of Nomura’s recent boost in overseas earnings came from healthy fixed income revenues in the US. It has struggled to replicate this in mainstream primary debt. Instead, it pushes its strength in structured solutions.

Quantitative easing has been the defining monetary policy innovation of the 21st century. With global economic recovery now seemingly robust, the challenge facing policymakers is to reverse this stimulus. This is likely to be fraught with danger, particularly in Europe.

The rollercoaster ride for currency-hedged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) shows no sign of slowing, with the up of 2015 and subsequent down of last year followed by increased investor interest in the early months of 2017.

The non-deliverable forward (NDF) market has been among the fastest growing corners of the FX market, as investors looking for yield increasingly turn their attention to emerging market (EM) currencies. Now, with Pragma’s algo-trading clients joining the party, liquidity could be set to surge even higher.

Central bank risk, not political risk, should be bond investors’ primary focus.

The shrinking number of publicly listed stocks is a growing worry for policymakers concerned about job creation, income inequality and consolidation towards monopoly pricing among a few very large and profitable quoted companies, but the real story is growing sophistication in private financing.

Ripple has come to be the dominant name for payments in the distributed ledger (DL) space, thanks largely to the decision to consolidate its efforts.

Taking payments off retail investors’ debit cards for new share placings has quickly changed the way AIM-listed companies place new equity and could have implications for bigger deals.

The first quarter of Donald Trump’s presidency has already been a boon for banks, according to the Banking Compliance Index (BCI).

New marketplace for impact investments; industry in need of institutional clout.