This year will be a challenging one for the wealth management industry, with many clients increasingly disillusioned with their managers. Restoring trust must be a top priority, but with continuous product-pushing by the large bank groups, a failure to communicate with clients when it matters most and, perhaps most importantly, the lack of transparency in fee structures, an overhaul of how some wealth managers conduct themselves is needed.

As the bankers' bonus season arrives and the world's media ogle the figures, something seems to have gone missing in the debate. One of the recommendations urged by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic, backed up with the threat of further intervention if ignored, was to change the way in which bonuses are paid, rather than the size of them.

Eurosceptics, many of them in the UK, have so far rejoiced at the crisis in the eurozone, believing it has proven that they were right all along – a monetary union without fiscal union makes economic nonsense. The crisis, say the eurosceptics, exposes the euro as a largely political project.

Every analyst has their own spin on what the impact of Basel III might be, and Bernard de Longevialle’s financial institutions team at credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has now added its own 16-page report. One of the most striking observations is the effect that tougher risk-weights on banks’ assets could have on certain banks that had recorded relatively healthy capital adequacy ratios under Basel II.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), a body of regulators chaired by the US Treasury secretary, issued a series of recommendations in January on how to implement the Volcker Rule and its ban on proprietary trading.

The surge in Middle Eastern merger and acquisitions (M&A) is evidence of a shift from the oil and gas sector to the development of more complex and interesting industries. Is it set to put the region on a new path?