Following its acquisition of Dresdner Bank in 2008, Germany’s Commerzbank is now turning its focus back to developing products and services, its chief information officer tells The Banker.

European securities will soon be settled on a central IT platform – Target2 Securities (T2S) – as part of the European Central Bank's initiative to harmonise post-trade standards. With the first wave of implementation scheduled for 2015, Duygu Tavan investigates how the T2S project is progressing and its consequences for the securities industry.

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.

According to the country's central bank, the shipping loans on banks' balance sheets are posing a considerable risk to the German banking sector, but some German banks are reluctant to deleverage their portfolios at a loss.

The European Central Bank has helped assuage fears of an imminent eurozone breakup, but sovereign, supranational and agency debt management officials must still contend with ratings downgrades and difficult political and fiscal situations in a number of countries. The Banker hears from a range of EU issuers both inside and outside the eurozone.

Since the global financial crisis, regulators have been pushing for structured products to be traded on exchanges for safety reasons. So why, in the German retail market, is the opposite happening, with more trades being done over the counter?

A strategic alliance in equities with a brokerage firm and the massive strengthening of the balance sheet have helped put UniCredit's corporate and investment bank ahead of the pack, according to deputy chief executive Olivier Khayat.