Western Europe

Rising interest rates have driven demand for more efficient liquidity structures.

As soon as the ink was dry on the agreement to take over Credit Suisse, UBS chairman Colm Kelleher rushed to bring ex-CEO Sergio Ermotti back to run the bank and the deal. Execution risk is off the charts, and the nerves of shareholders, employees and taxpayers are jangling.

Pure-play Swiss private bank Julius Baer has had to reconfigure its business model for the 2020s. Chief executive Philipp Rickenbacher talks to Euromoney about why scale and nurturing talent are key to the long-term success of a firm that does just one thing and one thing well: serving wealthy private clients.

The Credit Suisse deal may have merely accelerated Hamers’ anticipated departure.

The failure of venture capital’s favourite bank is bad news for a sector reliant on new injections of cheap capital to sustain loss-making growth.

What will UBS’s post-merger sustainable finance strategy look like?

First Abu Dhabi Bank’s recent interest in a bid for Standard Chartered and an ill-fated investment in Credit Suisse by Saudi National Bank have put the spotlight on Middle East banks as potential acquirers of international firms.

It has been over a decade and a half since a Chinese financial institution bought or invested in a Western counterpart. Beijing sees the West’s banking system as incomprehensibly chaotic and messy, and its own – albeit flawed – as a bastion of stability.

Hong Kong conference moves along. Nothing to see here.

Recent events call into question most of the core assumptions behind the rules designed to keep banks safe through a liquidity squeeze.

Will the fall of Credit Suisse be a seismic moment for private banking? Probably not – the reality is that wealthy clients need their financial advisers too much. Wealth is flighty for sure, but it usually alights nearby at a more stable lender.

UBS’s integration of Credit Suisse will be a long and uncertain process, but keeping the latter’s Swiss universal bank may mean the deal eventually comes good.

Bankers have been at pains to stress how different the world is today from the dark days of 2008: higher capital; more liquidity; lower credit risk and all that. But while individual banks may be safer than they were, collectively they arguably now face a worse existential crisis. Societies face awkward questions about how they value the utility of the banking sector – and how they should pay for it.

UBS shareholders might find plenty not to like in what seems at first glance like a great deal. The bank is making itself more complex at a time when creditors and investors put a premium on simplicity and focus.

The big foreign-exchange banks are focussing on delivering enhanced functionality to encourage greater use of their single-dealer platforms.

HSBC’s global head of trade finance talks to Euromoney about how the bank has built 'the trade finance platform for the future'.

Michael Klein can’t be expected to ‘devote significant time and attention’ to the unlikely prospect that UBS will allow a CS First Boston spin-off without being paid. Greensill-style invoices for Klein’s theoretical future services could be the answer.

Solar thermal technology could offer cheap carbon-free heat for manufacturers. But tech developers are stuck in a financing gap between venture capital and project finance that will be harder to fill after recent bank failures.

Credit Suisse came out of the global financial crisis in better shape than many peers. But fragility was never far away – in the years that followed its fortunes would swing back and forth, sometimes violently. Here is the bank’s route to 2023, explained through Euromoney’s own coverage.

Unfortunately, while the SNB can provide ample liquidity that Credit Suisse doesn’t really need, it cannot provide the trust and credibility it sorely lacks.

The decision by its Japanese owners to relist ARM, the UK’s great technology success story, in the US instead of London was inevitable after years of decline and the hammer blow of Brexit. Deregulation might further accelerate its collapse, even as the City wins a boost from new technology bringing the vast pool of retail money into equity capital markets.

Banks like Santander, BNP Paribas and SocGen see auto finance and the future of mobility as critical pieces of their overall group strategies. But as mobility becomes an increasingly fractured business, what does the auto finance bank of the future look like?

HSBC runs towards the storm as others are fleeing it.

For one of the most considerate men in capital markets, nothing was ever too much trouble.

The former Barclays chief executive is set to scale up the core banking-technology provider that aims to do banking 10 times better.

Santander executive chairman Ana Botín has stepped back from the M&A-based restructuring many assumed former CEO candidate Andrea Orcel would oversee. Euromoney asks Botín and her new chief executive, Héctor Grisi, how they plan to make this international retail bank succeed.

The EU green bond standard is understandably broad. But because of this, the limits between sustainable and transition finance remain unclear.

Patents are a high-profile demonstration of a bank’s commitment to innovation, but they are not the only option for those looking to encourage new ways of thinking.

Droit helps traders decide in milliseconds if deals comply with the ever-changing rules and aims to do the same for wealth managers.

The COO of Deutsche Bank’s International Private Bank, Sandra Wirfs, tells Euromoney how it has been able not just to slash costs but also to make its wealth management business more cost-efficient than the core bank.

Tokenization is spreading fast. Regulated finance is finally embracing blockchain technology just as most cryptocurrencies stand revealed as overleveraged Ponzi schemes. The institutional herd is moving, but can the blockchains they are shifting onto bear the load?

After its DAX return, Commerzbank now has a clear – if uncertain – path to achieving its profit target, according to CFO Bettina Orlopp.

The former CEO of Cazenove has written an intriguing reflection on his 23-year career at the storied London institution. It captures his view from the heart of the turmoil, but mostly steers clear of score-settling.

More blue blood than bad blood at former chief executive’s book launch.

Restrictions on upstream oil and gas financing aren’t the silver bullet that the sector needs to achieve its climate goals.

Firms betting on interest-rate declines will be hoping that inflation does not force central banks to raise the cost of borrowing again.

Higher interest rates will weigh heavily on the property development lending that makes up the bulk of OakNorth’s loan book. But chief executive and co-founder Rishi Khosla tells Euromoney the bank can maintain its ultra-low loan losses and keep growing.

Four years ago, Christian Sewing set out to give the German bank new direction. His plan, based on income-rich services like private banking, continues to surprise and succeed. Euromoney caught up with the head of International Private Bank, Claudio de Sanctis, to discuss last year’s financials and his plans in Asia and the Middle East.

With the digital pound, the UK is following much of what the European Central Bank has done on the digital euro. But could the UK’s more unified banking sector foster a more revolutionary central bank digital currency?

A month ago, First Abu Dhabi Bank said it had looked at Standard Chartered but decided against a bid. Now, it is believed to have changed its mind. What has changed?

While the bank plans to spin off its troubled investment bank, the new worry is whether and how soon it can repair the wealth management business.

New platform acts as central account keeper under Luxembourg law for first ever sterling bond deal on blockchain.

Banks and corporates are taking a variety of approaches to mitigating the impact of rising interest rates, quantitative tightening and economic uncertainty on the availability of liquidity.

Just back from Davos, the bank’s new head of sustainable finance says the industry needs to do more, and Barclays needs to do more on transition.

Private credit funds are committing more to specialist non-bank lenders such as iwoca, seeing big potential in small business credits, even if NPLs are set to climb.

Some leading FX banks have struggled to stay competitive in forwards, swaps and swaptions thanks to SA-CCR rules, but compressing portfolios helps.

While big US banks edge slowly towards exchange-like trading of loans, a group of market veterans have tested a system in Asia and will soon launch in Europe.

Appetite for corporate issuance remains robust as investors dismiss recession fears and take on credit exposure.

Strong collective-action campaigns might hurt some banks' reputations, but they will do little to convince those institutions to change their energy policies.

Going all out to keep the sell side sweet seems a sensible strategy for success in the difficult P2P FX market.

The recent update to the green taxonomy and implementation of the SFDR RTS have received a mixed reception in parts of the EU.

With little likelihood of currency volatility subsiding any time soon, corporates continue to face difficult decisions when it comes to how best to mitigate FX risk.

Some issuers are grabbing the opportunities offered by a new capital markets year. Others would do well to face reality sooner rather than later.

It seems difficult to convince investors that higher bank profits are sustainable.

As Europe’s economic mood sours, a sharp rise in interest rates is putting commercial real estate through its first big cyclical turn since 2008. The non-bank sector, which has become a vital enabler of funding at higher leverage, now faces a test of its resilience.

First Abu Dhabi Bank looked long and hard at Standard Chartered, and others will do the same so long as it’s cheap. But any suitor must win the approval of Temasek.

The European Commission has mandated instant payments across the eurozone, and banks must urgently ensure that their payment systems are fit for purpose.

The ECB is barely half way through raising rates. Quantitative tightening will further raise the cost of debt in 2023, and is set to test bond market capacity.

AT1s rallied on news that UBS will redeem a key deal in January. But with refinancing costs higher than coupon re-sets, the pressure now passes to other big banks.

The UK government has launched a sprawling range of measures to reform the country’s financial sector and markets. But the moves were mostly already under way – it is really all about the optics.