Ahead of Sibos 2013, chief executive of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) Gottfried Leibbrandt talks exclusively to The Banker about the challenges and opportunities in a global market that is continually evolving with new regulations, technologies and infrastructures.

Lars Millberg, head of transaction banking at SEB's merchant banking division, discusses the importance of innovation, and describes the bank's unique approach to encouraging out-of-the-box thinking among its employees.

Technology provider SAP has built a single-channel, multi-service cloud network that already has the endorsement of numerous large banks. With Swift also exerting its presence in the market, the two business models are not so much mutually exclusive, but supplementary. Welcome to the era of co-operative competition.

Across the world, bankers have been arming themselves with ever more inventive and innovative technology solutions, to tackle the problems of difficult and increasingly regulated financial markets. The Banker celebrates banks and their technology providers' efforts in its newly expanded Innovation in Technology and Transaction Banking Awards 2013.

Banks' failure to exploit the potential of 'big data' has seen them miss out on innumerable opportunities already, but with data growing at an exponential rate, the future cost of ignoring it could be vast.

Bitcoin – an audacious, innovative and 'mathematically fantastic' virtual currency, or an unregulated, volatile and opaque money channel? The Banker puts that question to banks, regulators and technology experts to get their take. 

In recent months, the London Stock Exchange has acquired UK-based clearing house LCH.Clearnet and announced the creation of a new central securities depository. Chief information officer Antoine Shagoury explains the group’s approach to growing its business.