Financial Services

Capital Calls: Rothschilds in charge

14 Feb 2023

Concise views on global finance: The storied banking dynasty wants to buy out minority investors on the cheap, and they’ll probably get away with it.

China’s offshore-stock fears trade in paranoia

14 Feb 2023

As travel resumes and the yuan softens, mainland authorities may step up curbs on citizens buying foreign shares via Hong Kong. Yet such services are unlikely conduits for mass capital flight. And denying domestic investors overseas hedging options is a double-edged sword.

Piyush Gupta shines his risk appetite with Adani

13 Feb 2023

The boss of $70 bln DBS, Singapore’s top lender, is one of the first major global bank bosses to speak out largely in favour of the troubled Indian industrialist. His typically candid comments put Gupta’s broader calculation of where Asia’s big opportunities lie into sharper focus.

Capital Calls: Alibaba’s Paytm exit

13 Feb 2023

Concise views on global finance: The e-commerce group has sold out of the Indian fintech company, though Paytm’s other Chinese backer may find it harder to follow suit.

Klein has safety net in First Boston high-wire act

9 Feb 2023

Credit Suisse is buying Michael Klein’s advisory shop for $175 mln, mostly in convertible debt. Both sides can make good money if they revive the old Wall Street firm. If it fails, the former Citi rainmaker gets stock in the Swiss parent, which should limit his downside.

Robinhood’s Wall Street bets aren’t yet working

9 Feb 2023

As retail stock trading and crypto have withered, so have the online brokerage’s main sources of income. So it has slashed costs, and staff, and is aggressively launching new products. But for now, it’s rising interest rates – not happy customers – that are holding Robinhood up.

Credit Suisse CEO tries to bail out a leaky ship

9 Feb 2023

Boss Ulrich Körner is cutting the Swiss lender’s costs and starting to hive off its superfluous bits. But clients have fled the core wealth business and traders seem to have stopped trading. Unless the business stabilises, he will have to pivot to a more radical breakup.

How Ant fell into fintech’s middle-income trap

9 Feb 2023

The Chinese payments-to-credit superapp once boasted a valuation surpassing banks like ICBC. New rules and capital requirements have cut it down to size. But there's still room for Ant to thrive as a mid-sized lender, provided it weathers its first economic stress test.

Payments darling wisely resists tech layoff trend

8 Feb 2023

Shares in $40 bln Adyen fell 12% after a hiring spree crimped its earnings. Adding more staff is conspicuous at a time when rivals like Stripe are doing the opposite. But boss Pieter van der Does has still-chunky margins, and needs to boost his small in-store payments business.

Debt is poor fix for Italian soccer’s malaise

8 Feb 2023

Having rejected private equity suitors, Italy’s top football league may turn to Wall Street banks to borrow up to 1 bln euros. The cash may give Serie A’s ailing TV rights business extra time. But without a governance shake-up, gorging on debt would extend its losing streak.

Gautam Adani’s woes were in banks’ plain sight

8 Feb 2023

Barclays, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank and others helped the Indian tycoon supersize his empire. A $110 bln share rout exposes their willingness to ignore warnings and take a narrow view of risk on lucrative relationships. As Adani struggles, the questions will get louder.

BNP investors deserve bigger slice of M&A windfall

7 Feb 2023

CEO Jean-Laurent Bonnafé is sitting on a 12 bln euro jackpot after selling the French bank’s U.S. business. He’s earmarked most of that for new lending and investment. But BNP’s low valuation implies shareholders think it would be better off buying back more stock.

Rothschild buyout is right idea, but on the cheap

6 Feb 2023

The family vehicle that controls the 3 bln euro investment bank wants to take it private. That’s sensible: it gets short shrift from public markets and doesn’t need access to capital. Yet strip out a chunky dividend and the price is low, which may set up a battle with minorities.

Paytm is stuck in dealmaking catch-22

6 Feb 2023

A banking licence would help the $4 bln Indian fintech generate earnings and boost its flailing share price. Regulators might only grant it once Ant and Alibaba offload their combined 28% stake. Yet the Chinese firms are unlikely to sell entirely until the stock improves.

China’s IPO reform is boon for VIPs

3 Feb 2023

The securities watchdog will introduce a U.S.-style registration system and other tweaks on the main exchanges. That should help thin out the queue of over 800 firms waiting to go public. Yet Beijing's preference for high-tech sectors implies only certain companies will benefit.

Goldman’s Marcus is a lesson in self-made failure

2 Feb 2023

The Wall Street firm’s blueprint for a digital bank was a good idea, until it buckled under an ambitious, top-down culture. CEO David Solomon is taking the blame, partly because almost everyone else who backed Marcus has quit. He can recoup the losses, but not the wasted time.

Deutsche Bank turnaround victory is really a loss

2 Feb 2023

Technically, CEO Christian Sewing beat an 8% return target that was the centrepiece of his plan to revive the former basket case. Strip out a tax gain, though, and he came up short. It leaves Sewing with a depressingly familiar job: cut costs and hope traders keep raking in cash.

Capital Calls: Cryptocurrency, Chelsea FC

1 Feb 2023

Concise views on global finance: Britain delivers a blow to digital assets by aiming to regulate them the same way as traditional ones, while the UK soccer team’s new owner Todd Boehly splashes the cash.

UniCredit’s share-price surge has further to run

31 Jan 2023

Boss Andrea Orcel wants to hand more than 5 bln euros to investors through dividends and buybacks, after reporting stellar 2022 earnings. Further Russia writedowns are a risk, but the bank’s bottom line looks solid. A valuation of just over half tangible book value looks too low.

UBS boss Ralph Hamers has a growth problem

31 Jan 2023

Revenue in the Swiss bank’s wealth-management core slid 2% in 2022, as markets fell. Higher interest rates and China’s re-opening will ease the pain, but not for long. Hamers is running short on credible ways to get the top line moving, undermining his hunt for a valuation boost.