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Smashing it
It was the year of the re-emergence of Russian issuance, the Middle East sovereign jumbo and liability management. No bank did more to lead those themes than JP Morgan, which wins IFR’s Emerging EMEA Bond House of the Year.
Record-breaker
It was the most eagerly awaited bond deal of the year. But could Saudi Arabia match the hype around its debut transaction?
A turn for the better
It was a mixed year for Latin America’s debt markets – one of record issuance and ongoing crises. One bank positioned itself nearly perfectly to take advantage of the circumstances and beat its competitors. JP Morgan is IFR’s Latin America Bond House of the Year.
Tango and cash
If you had said one year ago that Argentina would raise the largest bond ever from an emerging markets sovereign, you might well have been laughed out of the room.
Rock-bottom interest rates, quantitative easing and negative yields have turned the fixed-income investor universe upside down. How do fund managers make sense of these changes and how are they positioning their portfolios in response?
2016 couldn’t have been much worse for equity capital markets bankers: big spikes in volatility, intermittent periods of market closure, pulled deals and a collapse in fees. How have they weathered the storm, and how will they carry their injuries into 2017?
Chinese banks and brokers are taking over the Asian investment banking league tables, as more mainland issuers and investors turn to the international markets. Global rivals need to rethink their approach.
Big banks have lost more than US$60bn in their corporate centres in the last four years. Some critics say the units can mask the true performance of business divisions.
The rise and rise of the passive fund is yet another result of the low interest rate environment. And a worrying one.
A long-term commitment to re-balancing the Chinese economy should make the M&A boom more sustainable. But worries about capital flight and the renminbi’s weakness may force the authorities to put a stop to the party.
Fintech start-ups have mostly played around the edges of investment banks’ core activities – but not for much longer. The global financial full-service model was already creaking, but an Uber-style disruption to front-office activity is no longer a distant threat.
A growing realisation that over-enthusiastic and uncoordinated banking regulation is damaging the real economy, combined with the shock election victory of Donald Trump, is likely to see the regulatory onslaught of the post-financial crisis period lessen in intensity, if not reverse course.
