Sanjeev Kumar leads a corporate advisory team at RBS designed to maintain the ability to provide large corporates with strategic advice after the bank’s exit from mergers and acquisitions and equity capital markets. He tells The Banker why talk is valuable.

With clients demanding more clarity on their investments, and new regulations putting pressure on margins, wealth managers have their work cut out to remain profitable and relevant. Can they rise to the challenge?

The UK's relationship with the EU has rarely been harmonious, but in recent years the heavy-handed regulations and onerous taxes perceived to be emanating from Brussels have seen this marriage teeter perilously close to divorce. A referendum could be called in the UK in 2017 regarding its EU membership, but how would the country – and London in particular – look should the vote call for a permanent separation?

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.

The creation of a single financial institutions group at Barclays in February 2013 formalised increasingly close co-operation between coverage investment bankers and capital markets practitioners. The co-head of its FIG EMEA capital markets unit tells Philip Alexander how this has been working.

The University of Hertfordshire needed to develop student accommodation without overburdening its own balance sheet. A project bond deal proved to be the answer.

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.