Banks

Stressed Beijing will buck Fed’s tightening trend

17 Jan 2022

China's reported output grew 8.1% in 2021, well above target, but activity slowed sharply at the end of the year. Monetary easing has been restrained by debt concerns, but the central bank surprised markets with a rate cut on Monday. Low inflation and a strong yuan give room for more.

Wall Street is well fueled for a dog-eat-dog 2022

14 Jan 2022

As they report blowout earnings for 2021, JPMorgan and its banking peers no longer need to fear reticent borrowers or low interest rates. There’s a new problem: each other. Competition for customers and talent is rising, and high valuations may understate the tug-of-war to come.

Capital Calls: BlackRock gets an active boost

14 Jan 2022

Concise views on global finance: A renaissance in active strategies at the world’s largest investment manager helped vault it past $10 trillion in assets under management.

TPG listing caps 30 years of easy money

13 Jan 2022

The $9 bln stock-market debutant has benefited from an interest-rate slide that began before its founding in 1992. David Bonderman’s private equity firm, still focused on LBOs, is exposed to debt costs rising. Others have used public shares to finance reinvention; so should TPG.

Russian expansion is a hard sell for UniCredit

13 Jan 2022

The Italian lender may buy Otkritie, which has a $7 bln book value. After a 2017 rescue, Russia’s seventh biggest bank is fast-growing, profitable and has a strong board. But competing with state peers will be tricky, especially if its parent shuns riskier corporate clients.

Big transitions are better embraced than resisted

4 Jan 2022

The extraordinary actions required to make epochal shifts, like eradicating hydrocarbons or vanquishing Covid-19, are being taken now. Central banks are removing punch-bowl money. Digital is crushing everything. And without social inclusion, it all falls apart. Welcome to 2022.

Citi’s Mexico exit leaves it neater but not better

12 Jan 2022

Boss Jane Fraser is shrewdly selling a business that she once oversaw, and which her predecessor Mike Corbat stubbornly refused to jettison. The lender is growing more focused under its new chief executive but what’s left, in particular Citi’s U.S. consumer bank, lacks oomph.

Jefferies’ lucrative SPACs deliver a triple thwack

11 Jan 2022

The investment bank has made a niche for itself in underwriting, advising and sponsoring blank-check firms. Its profitable work in all three roles has left regular investors underwater. Jefferies isn’t the only one, but a smaller firm could take a bigger hit to its reputation.

Cerberus hellish German bank bet reaches early end

11 Jan 2022

The U.S. investor sold nearly half of its Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank stakes at a 20% loss. Its investment suffered from bad timing, and the difficulty of forcing change with a small holding. Fund constraints mean the group is now selling in the middle of the banks’ recovery.

Italy’s bank lemon loses most of its sourness

11 Jan 2022

BPER is set to snatch problem lender Carige for a token amount. Local rivals that collectively rescued the Genoese bank will inject 530 mln euros beforehand. That should leave the acquirer no worse off, but the synergies are unlikely to make the deal especially sweet.

European banks’ league-table loss is investor win

10 Jan 2022

Dealmakers at Credit Suisse, Barclays, UBS and others are losing market share in their home region. Fighting back is costly and futile given the advantages of U.S. behemoths like JPMorgan. Better to slim down and focus on key niches, as Deutsche Bank has with bond underwriting.

China’s next debt crisis will be municipal

10 Jan 2022

Local government investment vehicles owe $8 trillion, over half national GDP, and are big dollar bond issuers. Collapsing property sales and Omicron stress are squeezing them. Beijing may let some default; others might try to dump assets in a weak market. It could get ugly.

Capital Calls: HSBC and China, Dr. Martens

6 Jan 2021

Concise views on global finance: The Asia-focused lender has a chance to take greater control of its mainland brokerage after recent positive noises from Beijing; buyout firm Permira picks a good time to offload shares in the $5 bln bootmaker.

SocGen $6 bln car deal leaves shares in slow lane

6 Jan 2022

The French bank is helping fund the purchase of LeasePlan by its automotive unit ALD. Returns look high and the move helps the pair shift to an electric future. But since investors prefer focused banks, rather than conglomerates, CEO Frédéric Oudéa won’t get much credit.

U.S. Bancorp sails haplessly into political storm

3 Jan 2022

The lender’s $8 bln purchase of MUFG Union Bank wouldn’t have troubled regulators unduly a year ago. But Democrats want to get tough, and the Republican chair of the FDIC has quit in protest. The politicization of Wall Street cops may slow M&A, but it may not help consumers much.

Wall Street will find ways to satisfy crypto envy

3 Jan 2022

Banks have mostly been shut out of the $2 trln digital asset craze. Many want in, but they will have to deal with murky regulation, a 24/7 market and patchy legal protections. A fight for profit and customers may also obscure other risks in a market untested by the mainstream.

What our columnists got right and wrong in 2021

31 Dec 2021

We look back at a year as unpredictable as its predecessor. We foresaw an M&A surge, even if some of the deals we called for, like Tesla buying Daimler, failed to materialize. But we nailed a few biggies, like Grab’s moment in the limelight, inflation’s return and mRNA’s success.

Not all merger boutiques will be equal in 2022

30 Dec 2021

The crackdown on big deals will put a crimp on fees for shops that advise large companies, like PJT or Goldman. The most successful ones will be those that focus on transactions worth less than $1 billion, like Moelis, or big private equity. Houlihan Lokey tops that list.

Breakingviews readers’ top picks for 2021

30 Dec 2021

As a second pandemic year unfolded, subscribers clicked most on views about deals, including AT&T’s spinoff of DirecTV. Refinitiv readers loved Wall Street, from Morgan Stanley to Coinbase's listing. Our eclectic followers also tracked airlines, meme stocks and Chinese markets.

Viewsroom: More 2022 predictions and prescriptions

30 Dec 2021

M&A bankers will need to think small, in size, but big when it comes to helping clients meet net-zero climate targets. Watch for Big Pharma to tool up in the data arms race. And the Great Resignation will hit executive suites because running companies remotely is no fun.