North America

Brokers and insurance agents can still ignore Gary Cohn and shake off their reputation as cowboys.

While the imagery around the Trump presidency looks awful, it may obscure some good intentions – but what stops us cheerleading these efforts is the worry where they spring from.

A US federal appeals court ruling on February 21 effectively ended a legal attempt by a group of hedge funds to stop the government from collecting billions of dollars of profits made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in recent years.

Religious organizations are challenging corporations over climate change, while big investors stay mute.

The US always looked a tough nut to crack for CLSA and it’s only getting tougher, so it’s not a shock to see the Hong Kong brokerage heading for the exit.

While US regional banks are thriving, European banks of a similar size, in similar economies, are the focus of concern. If they want to survive in a rapidly changing eurozone, they might do well to take a look at provincial America.

Continental Europe’s top corporate and investment banks showed just how far they continue to trail their US peers as they reported annual results in February.

The dollar’s multi-year bull run might last a couple more months, but its fundamental underpinnings are weakening.

Performance analysis solutions, once so pricey only the biggest banks could afford them, are becoming more widely used for FX strategies as regulations demand greater due-diligence processes and sell-siders are under pressure to prove they are giving clients value for money.

The Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) regulatory sandbox has been a hit with market participants and regulators alike, giving firms whose services were never anticipated by existing rules the chance to test out new features without fear of fines or enforcement action.

If you want to kill the conversation at a dinner party, one sure-fire winner is pensions, but it is the $25.2 trillion in pension assets that fuel global capital markets and there needs to be some serious thinking on how they will work in the future.

Rather than moaning about the time and money spent chasing false-positive alerts of criminal or terrorist financing, banks ought to be sharpening up their own anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) systems or renting in better ones.

They have tried and mostly failed – European investment banks’ lag to their US peers is a blot on their international prestige and it is structural.

Attempts to build a North America business have left egg on the faces of many senior HSBC executives, but now, with two key differentiators – its big balance sheet and global network – it may have figured out how to be an investment bank in the US.

There’s plenty wrong with post-crisis US bank regulation, but as the new US administration looks to roll back Dodd-Frank, its protectionist instincts might start a global race to the regulatory bottom.

The rally in bank stocks seen after Donald Trump’s election victory had stalled by the time of his inauguration as president on January 20. Fourth-quarter results from US banks were also announced in January, giving bank heads a chance to pitch their prospects relative to competitors.

One of the US president’s oft-repeated election promises was a tax holiday to encourage US corporations to bring assets held abroad back onshore – if he delivers, the dollar is likely to strengthen considerably against the currencies in which those assets are held, says Nomura.

The finance industry continues to struggle with the disconnect between talk and action on diversity. Is it time for the activists to shake things up?

For a non-US bank to be a success in the US, it has to get its ambitions right first.

US banks strike positive tone over earnings; Europeans less likely to reap rewards of new volatility.

A booming start to bond issuance in 2017 is threatened on two related fronts.

Last year was far from a vintage year for the big five US corporate and investment banking franchises, with almost no business lines seeing an overall increase in revenues in 2016, but the gains in fixed income sales and trading were enough to inch CIB division revenues up by 1.4% to $142 billion.

Globalization and alliances are at risk.

The international financial reporting standard (IFRS) hedge accounting rules are likely to bring benefits to corporate treasurers, but could be a big worry for bankers.

Only a week into Trump taking office, it is too early to make concrete predictions about what the FX market can expect, but the acting chairman of the CFTC has outlined some of his priorities, which could provide clues.

Reprivatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is high on the agenda of the new Trump administration – its close ties to the hedge funds that were hit by their conservatorship and subsequent cash sweep could explain why, and is just one example of the murky incentives that have followed Donald Trump into the White House.

Citi's new mobile app is a first crucial step to re-invention. Head of consumer banking, Stephen Bird, tells Euromoney the bank may have only a couple of years to convince customers it is the high-quality, always-connected partner with the services they want.

As he steps down from the CFTC on inauguration day, Timothy Massad warns the new administration that wholesale repeal of post-crisis financial regulation would be a big mistake.

Gary Cohn, president and COO of Goldman Sachs, was poised to join president-elect Trump’s new administration at the end of last year, having been appointed director of the National Economic Council.

Big banks are finding it tough to be consistent around environmental standards. They need to try harder to address the conflicts and inconsistencies.