Incorporating digital practices into bond issuance and lifecycle management will bring many benefits, but it is a long and complex journey. However, developments in streamlining workflows and in bond tokenisation bring hope of big changes soon.

The head of the financial institutions group for the Americas at Credit Suisse is keen to focus on the bank’s collaborative strengths as it moves on from its own difficulties and responds to changing market conditions. 

Open banking offers opportunities for data-driven business models by allowing customers to share their banking data securely with third parties. The next step is unlocking customer data across the financial sector.

The bank continues its long heritage of delivering innovative equity derivative-related products and those for sustainable finance.

The McDonald’s franchisee married financial success with material environmental outcomes with its first SLB.

New contenders are challenging the dominance of Swift in the cross-border payments space, compelling it to improve on its flaws.

African nations are at the vanguard of the new movement towards central bank digital currencies, in a desperate bid to regain the initiative in the wake of rising cryptocurrency usage across the continent. 

Numis’s advisory businesses, including M&A, are going strong, says M&A head Stuart Ord, and bear out its diversification strategy.

Five regional central banks have announced plans to enable QR code-based cross-border payments. Furthermore, they want to link such a network to other regional payments platforms and eventually to central bank digital currencies. 

In contrast to the US and Europe, where IPO volumes have slumped, the Middle East is enjoying a bumper period, with HSBC playing a key role.