Recent years have seen private banks hit by heavy regulation, fines and spiralling compliance costs, all of which have taken their toll on profits and brand value. As banking groups redefine their exposure to wealth management across the world, will private banking become a game better played by local and specialised names?

Miles Millard’s latest appointment is a sign of Deutsche Bank taking another step on its journey toward a unified client coverage structure.

There is an optimistic feeling among the CEOs of Spain's leading banks, as profits and domestic conditions improve. With the European Central Bank's imminent asset quality review expected to be passed with flying colours, the country's lenders are now looking beyond survival and towards growth, both domestically and internationally.

If the early 2000s were all about the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, now attention is shifting to the up-and-coming countries of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey – the MINTs. And with rapid economic growth predicted, retail banks in these countries will be under enormous pressure to keep up.

Over the past two years banks have been hit by a huge wave of litigation relating to residential mortgages, interbank rates, consumer insurance and money laundering. Though lenders have largely managed to absorb the costs fairly easily, it seems that the regulators are not quite finished when it comes to dishing out fines.

The acquisition of UK brokerage Collins Stewart Hawkpoint by Canada's Canaccord Genuity gave Alexis de Rosnay the chance to fulfil his ambition of building a business, as the group aims to become a global mid-market investment bank.

Privately owned communications infrastructure firm Arqiva successfully extended its maturity profile in early 2014, after a major round of refinancing a year earlier.

The new 'grand coalition' of conservatives and socialists in Germany may have a huge majority in the Bundestag, but there are already disagreements over the extent of national powers in the functioning of the eurozone banking union.