North America

Geopolitics, epidemics, the media… Burkhard Varnholt, CIO and head of investment solutions at Julius Baer, shares his firm's views on risks for the year ahead.

Larry Adams, CIO for Deutsche Bank's Wealth Management Americas, shares his views on how 2014 was full of surprises and how 2015 could be full of risks.

Richard Madigan, chief investment officer at JPMorgan Private Bank, shares his views on oil-price surprises, and euro-exit and geopolitical concerns for the year ahead.

Steven Wieting, global chief investment strategist for Citi Private Bank, shares his firm's views on the surprises of 2014 and the market ahead.

Manuela D’Onofrio, head of global investments at UniCredit Private Bank, offers her views on 2014 and the year ahead.

From the Volcker Rule to the EU’s proposed ring-fencing, inconsistent rules on bank structures, both within the EU and between the US and Europe, are the latest threat to the global banking model.

US officials are waging a war to promote the leverage ratio as a binding constraint on banks’ capital frameworks, further imperilling strategic planning for cross-border lenders.

You’d have thought the new CEO of Santander needed little introduction. But Ana Botín’s advisers have played a cannily surgical game… so far.

Markets ended 2014 beset by fear. Deflation is now a global concern and the doomsayers see rapidly falling commodity prices as the canary in the coalmine. But the nattering nabobs of negativism are wrong.

It has been a year of two halves for FX, with an opening seven months characterized by low volatility and few attractive trading opportunities for FX managers, before a dollar bull market roared into life in August. It is arguably the first such market for 20 years, bringing with it a rise in volatility and enhanced opportunities for FX traders.

BNP Paribas Wealth Management CIO Florent Bronès shares his firm's views on last year's surprises and the risks ahead in 2015.

Investment in FX technology is expected to mirror growth in wider financial services IT expenditure over the next few years.

Want to see improvements to your town or city? Don’t just rely on municipal budgets. New crowdfunding sources are springing up. The disruptors even have municipal bond markets in their sights.

Some parts of the US market are ‘carnage’; energy bond maturity wall is not due until after 2017.

Economists have been downgrading oil exporters’ risk scores in recent weeks, but there might be worse to come if spot prices and petro-currencies continue to fall.

New market regulations governing the FX industry have done more harm than good for FX trading desks, according to an October survey by TradeTech FX.

The growth of data as an analytic and compliance tool is transforming strategies for banks, corporates and intelligence-providers alike.

Multiples and lack of covenants in the leveraged finance market are firmly in the firing line of US regulators. Sponsors say they can handle the new rules. Banks are already looking for ways round them. But with regulators hell-bent on proving a point in 2015, what will happen when a leading US company struggles, or fails, to refinance a cov-lite loan?

The main charge against Goldman Sachs by the US Senate committee investigating commodity market practices was that the bank effectively controlled actions by its metals warehouse subsidiary, Metro International, that created a bottleneck in aluminum supply, and that Goldman could have profited from associated trades in its securities arm.

Paul Simon sang that there are 50 ways to leave your lover, and Goldman Sachs has reminded us that there are just as many ways to sneak a trade through, even when conflicts of interest threaten to drag your reputation back into the mud.

Investment banks are keen to close the chapter on the foreign-exchange rate-rigging scandal after Wednesday’s announcement of regulatory fines totalling $4.2 billion, but more banks are expected to be fined and industry participants believe other nefarious practices should now be thoroughly investigated.

European proposals for mandatory clearing of non-deliverable forwards (NDFs) published in October seemed to be a decisive step toward a new framework for FX derivatives trading. However, responses to the consultation reveal deep divisions among FX market participants over the way forward.

Asset managers are still losing millions of pounds a year in hidden foreign-exchange bank charges, research shows, despite the advancement of money-saving solutions such as independent live benchmarks and transaction cost analysis (TCA).

Revenues on the rise; More lending and discretionary mandates.

BNY Mellon is to expand aggressively in the Asia-Pacific region, targeting increased market share in the wealth business, offering a discretionary model to customers.

Jon Macaskill imagines how the star fund manager might have recorded the reasons behind his shock move from Pimco to Janus Capital. Item one: update his enemy list.

As equity markets have sold off and investors rushed into risk-free bonds, even supposedly liquid US treasuries have seen prices gapping. As volatility rises and investors focus on grim fundamentals, they see a broken bond-market structure.

Market participants are relatively relaxed about the impact of last year’s change to the US trading model, relative to the dire warnings from the global trade association for OTC derivatives, but global market fragmentation remains a risk.

Commodities could be facing further weakness, amid falling demand in China and elsewhere. All eyes are again on the US, where strong growth could support prices and prevent a further sell-off of commodity currencies.

Since the US Federal Reserve met in September the data has been tortured and every word pored over. Why are we in awe of the crystal ball gazing of supposed experts?